In visual search, guidance by surface type is different than classic guidance

Visual search for targets among distractors is more efficient if attention can be guided to targets by attributes like color. In real-world search, we guide attention using information about surfaces (e.g., paintings are on walls). We compare “classic” color guidance to surface guidance in “scenes” of cubes. When a target can lie on one of many surfaces, color guidance is effective but surface guidance is not (Experiments 1–3). Surface guidance works when cued surfaces are coplanar (Experiment 4) or few in number (Experiment 5). We speculate that surface guidance is slow and limited to very few surfaces at one time.