A study published in Nature Communications found that participants could easily predict when a single ball would hit the ground after disappearing from view, but struggled to track two invisible balls simultaneously.
Notes on verification
Confirmed by the original peer-reviewed Nature Communications paper (Balaban & Ullman, 2025) and multiple independent science news outlets, all consistent in describing the methodology and results. [tier=gold indep_score=0.867 clusters=3 claim_tier=notable]
Sources
- Researchers uncover surprising limit on human imagination (seed:psychology_and_neuroscience)
- https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-025-61021-8 (corroboration)
- https://medicalxpress.com/news/2025-08-uncover-limit-human.html (corroboration)
- https://scienceblog.com/t-human-imagination-one-moving-object-serial-tracking-limit/ (corroboration)