Multiple object tracking is selectively linked to STEM achievement

STEM-related work is increasingly critical to economic development. Yet STEM education is leaky, with many individuals prematurely writing off STEM training and STEM careers. Could modern mind and brain research produce tools that identify STEM talent? Such tools would be most useful if they did not require learned STEM knowledge attained through prior education. Here, we reveal a prime candidate: multiple object tracking (MOT). A prominent test of spatial attention, MOT has well-documented links to math-related neural mechanisms. Yet it has not been systematically studied as a correlate of STEM outcomes. In a cognitively and demographically diverse cross-sectional sample of over 20,000 participants, we link MOT performance selectively to four separate indicators of STEM talent across the lifespan: K-12 school performance, college admissions test scores, college major, and occupation. MOT relates: (1) more strongly to self-reported K-12 math and science performance than writing performance, (2) more strongly to math SAT scores than verbal SAT scores, (3) more strongly than vocabulary performance to pursuing a STEM major in college, and (4) more strongly than vocabulary performance to obtaining a STEM profession. The selectivity of these links rules out broad cognitive or motivational mechanisms. At the same time, these links are demographically general, persisting across age, gender, and native language. We conclude that MOT is an efficient, focused correlate of STEM achievement. Plausibly, a STEM-linked tool, like MOT, that requires no prior STEM knowledge, could help to recruit and retain individuals to STEM who might otherwise be lost to a leaky pipeline.