Categorizing a moving target in terms of its speed, direction, or both.

Researchers showed pigeons short movies of a moving dot on a screen.

The dot varied in two ways: how fast it moved and which way it went.

Food was given only when the birds pecked after the right speed, the right direction, or a mix of both.

The team then watched which part of the movie the birds paid attention to.

The pigeons quickly shifted their gaze to match the rule that paid off.

When speed earned food, they ignored direction. When direction paid, they ignored speed.

When both mattered, they split attention almost perfectly, like tiny statisticians.

Kennedy et al. (1993) first showed that pigeons treat "moving" as a natural category. Luckett et al. (2002) goes deeper: birds can zoom in on single motion parts if you pay them for it.

Vyazovska et al. (2016) added color and shape cues step-by-step. The new study shows you can also pull attention away from unused cues simply by changing the payoff.

Evenhuis (1996) found that stimulus similarity changes choice. Here, the birds show the same idea: they pick the cue that gives the clearest path to food.

Reinforcement alone can teach learners—human or animal—to focus on what matters and ignore what does not. When you write programs, arrange the payoff so the key feature is the only one that pays. If the goal shifts, change the contingency and watch attention move with it.