This study provides clear evidence that semantic information plays a key role during the temporal formation of object representations.
As was also stated above, our explanation is fully compatible with resource- or slot-based approaches, but it emphasizes a different perspective on the formation of object representations that can be empirically investigated and directly observed in the laboratory.
This finding is consistent with current theoretical models in which the HPC plays a central role in integrating object and spatial information or in representing the relationship between objects and their location (Eichenbaum 2004; Bast et al. 2005) but does not mediate the formation of object familiarity (Brown and Aggleton 2001).
As target detection either was not affected at all by masking or showed the reverse pattern of results, as compared to enumeration, the powerful effects of visual masking on the formation of object files reported above cannot be explained by a failure to register the presence of a target display.
If capacity limits in vision and visual working memory can be explained by temporal constraints on the formation of object files, we would expect that techniques that limit processing time at specific temporal stages of the visual analysis would selectively inhibit the successive mechanisms operating upon the sensory input at these stages.
This is very useful for dealing with slowly moving objects, since it avoids the formation of "ghost" objects due to the fact that, after the real object has moved away, the observed background behind it has become too different from the one recorded in the reference image.
In the unimodal case, temporal coherence between auditory features (i.e., pitch, timbre, location) is a principal contributor to the formation of auditory objects (Shamma et al., 2011; Teki et al., 2013); however, the definition of an object can be difficult to pin down.
Formation of these objects, either by core accretion or gravitational instability, presents substantial theoretical difficulties.
Despite significant observational and theoretical progress, several fundamental questions regarding the structure and formation of these objects remain unanswered.
Today, Milton Zysman and Frank Wallace publish on the arXiv their explanation for the formation of these objects and it makes for fascinating, if not entirely convincing, reading.
