Figure 1. Rapid serial visual presentation (RSVP) task.

(a) Experimental procedure. The stimulus set comprised 12 face targets, 12 object targets, and 45 masks of various objects. Participants viewed a RSVP sequence of 11 images, with the middle image (target) either a face or an object. The images were presented at a rate of 17 ms per picture or 34 ms per picture in separate trials. Following a delay of 0.7 - 1 s to prevent motor artifacts, subjects were prompted to respond by pressing a button whether they have seen a face or not. (Images shown are not examples of the original stimulus set due to copyright; the exact stimulus set is visualized at https://megrsvp.github.io. Images shown are in public domain and available at pexels.com under a Creative Commons Zero (CC0) license.) (b) Behavioral performance in the two RSVP conditions. Bars indicate d’ performance and error bars indicate SEM. Stars above each bar and between bars indicate significant performance and significant differences between the two conditions, respectively (n=17; two-sided signed-rank test; P$\ll$0.001).