title: Beyond visible persistence: an alternative account of temporal integration and segregation in visual processing.
abstract: When processing sequences of rapidly varying stimuli, the visual system must satisfy two conflicting requirements. To maintain perceptual continuity, sequential stimuli must be integrated into a single, unified percept. On the other hand, to detect rapid changes, sequential stimuli must be segregated from each other. We propose that these conflicting demands are reconciled by a process that codes the temporal relationship between contiguous stimuli: Stimuli that are coded as co-extensive are integrated and those that are coded as disjoint are segregated. This approach represents a conceptual departure from the more traditional "intrinsic persistence" view of temporal integration. The approach provides a parsimonious account of the results of two temporal-integration tasks in which the durations of the leading and trailing displays were varied over a broad range. The data were accurately fit by a quantitative model in which temporal codes were determined by the correlation in time between the visual responses to the leading and trailing displays.
authors.affiliation: University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada.
authors.forename: P
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Dixon
authors.forename: V
authors.initials: V
authors.lastname: Di Lollo
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008027:Light; D008297:Male; D010775:Photic Stimulation; D011930:Reaction Time; D013647:Task Performance and Analysis; D013997:Time Factors; D014796:Visual Perception