Shine-through: temporal aspects

If a vernier stimulus precedes a grating for a very short time, the vernier either remains invisible, but may bequeath some of its properties to the grating (feature inheritance), or might shine through keeping its features — depending on the number of grating elements [Herzog, M. H. & Koch, C., 2001. Seeing properities of an invisible element: feature inheritance and shine-through. Proceedings of the Natlional Academy of Science USA 98, 4271–4275]. Feature inheritance and shine-through represent two different states of feature binding [Herzog, M. H., Koch, C., & Fahle, M., Switching binding states. Visual Cognition (in press)], whereas shine-through depends in subtle ways on the spatial layout of the grating [Herzog, M. H., Fahle, M., & Koch, C., (2001). Spatial aspects of object formation revealed by a new illusion, shine-through. Vision Research]. Here, we show that also temporal parameters of the grating influence shine-through. For example, a delayed presentation of certain grating elements can deteriorate performance dramatically.