Fig. 1.

Illustration of how the temporal limits of visual object processing can result in capacity limits for individuation and identification. (A) Under normal viewing conditions, the stream of visual information is individuated during the period of visual persistence of the sampled sensory image. Items that are individuated are potential “object files” that can then be identified and consolidated into visual short-term memory (vSTM). (B) Integration masking via forward masking reduces the effective persistence of the target items, leading to a reduction in capacity for individuation and, consequently, also for identification. (C) Interruption (backward) masking does not influence the initial individuation of items, but instead disrupts the identification and consolidation of items into vSTM