Figure 1.

A, Behavioral performance from a hypothetical VSTM experiment in which a set of dissimilar colors are conjoined with a set of similar shapes, resulting in a maximal of three colors and one shape retained together in VSTM. As display set size increases, Ks (the number of features retained in VSTM) increase and plateau at three for colors and at one for shapes. B–D, Possible superior IPS response patterns. The integration account argues that the superior IPS stores integrated whole objects, requiring all attended object features to be represented together in this brain area; the object account argues that superior IPS stores the total number of objects encoded in VSTM, regardless of whether they are whole or partial, and the feature account argues that the superior IPS simply stores the total amount of feature information retained in VSTM. Note that, under this experimental manipulation, the last two accounts predict the same superior IPS response pattern.