Day 121 of 150 Pattern Difficulty 7/10

Color, motion, orientation, and size are the strongest search guides

Quick answer

Color, motion, orientation, and size are the strongest search guides. Today's question (Visual search guidance) asks about a finding from Wolfe, J. M., & Horowitz, T. S. in 2017. The correct option is Color, motion, orientation, and size — full explanation, primary source, and glossary cross-links below.

Today's question

Wolfe & Horowitz (2017) reviewed evidence on which feature dimensions most reliably guide attention during visual search. Which set did they classify as 'undoubted' guiding attributes?

  1. A Object identity, semantic category, and emotional valence
  2. B Color, motion, orientation, and size
  3. C Phonological similarity, lexical frequency, and semantic priming
  4. D Mental rotation, allocentric framing, and pseudoword form
Reveal the answer and explanation

Correct: B — Color, motion, orientation, and size

Wolfe & Horowitz (2017) sorted the literature on guiding features into tiers of evidence. They classified four attributes — color, motion, orientation, and size — as 'undoubted' guides of attention because target–distractor differences on these dimensions reliably produce efficient (near-flat-slope) search across many studies. A second tier of 'probable' guides included luminance contrast, depth, and shape. They argued that semantic factors and scene context can bias search but typically operate atop these basic visual features rather than substituting for them. The taxonomy is now the standard reference for which low-level features genuinely steer the moving eye during visual search.

About the source

Wolfe, J. M., & Horowitz, T. S. (2017). Five factors that guide attention in visual search. Nature Human Behaviour, 1(3), 0058.

Every Cognition Bible question cites a primary source — a paper, book chapter, or monograph that exists, that we can point to on Google Scholar, and whose finding the question accurately summarizes. No fabricated authority strings, no name-drops without paper-level grounding.

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