Individual Differences In Perception Do Not Reflect Temporal Integration in A Perceptual Moment

Stimulus duration has the opposite effect in masking and fusion tasks: longer durationsenhance performance in masking tasks but impair it in fusion tasks.Several visual theoriesexplain these and related phenomena with recourse to small temporal window wherestimuli are integrated or superimposed. Accordingly, individuals with a long temporalwindow should exibit good performance in the fusion task and poor performance in themasking task. Therefore, performance in these two tasks should result in a negativecorrelation. We tested this negative correlation and found decisive evidence to the contrary,a positive correlation (N = 21, BF = 256). People who perform well on the fusion taskalso perform well on the masking task. Hence, individual variation in a temporal windowdoes not drive individual differences in vision. Instead, we suspect the positive correlationreflects a common ability to read out from and to refresh iconic storage.