Figure 9.

Hypotheses, evidence from this study, and our current interpretation. In the hypothesis column, a checkmark indicates the presence of significant evidence in favor of the hypothesis; a question mark indicates that the evidence is weak or absent. In the evidence column, ⁺⁺ indicates strong evidence, ⁺ indicates evidence to be considered in the light of potential caveats. Caveats: (1) Imprecise fixation may have blurred the V1-patch checkerboard entailing greater reduction of decoding contrast for patch-swapped than for globally coherent stimuli. (2) Imprecise fixation may also have added noise to the local orientation signal for all stimuli, except gratings. However, our task required continual fixation to discern tiny foveal cues. Successful performance suggests that lapses of fixation were minimal. (3) Imprecision in V1 patch definitions might have led to reduced patch contrast for patch-swapped stimuli, where the preference predicted by the global map inverts for adjacent patches. However, a control analysis (see Results, Discussion) did not support this account.