Fig. 4

Evidence for early gradual selection: early brain responses are selectively sustained over time as a function of target proximity. a Panels represent temporal generalization matrices for the target stimulus (T) and distractors at positions T−4 to T + 2 at long inter-target lag. The color scale is as in Fig. 3a except that below-chance classification performance is not represented for visibility purposes. b Classification performance as a function of time for a classifier trained at 170 ms after stimulus onset. Filled areas represent time samples at which the classification performance was significantly different from chance (Signed-rank tests, corrected for multiple comparisons using FDR across stimulus positions, training times (170 and 370 ms) and testing times). Colored dotted lines represent stimuli onsets. c Mean classification performance of the same classifier but averaged over time (400–550 ms). The dotted line represents chance. d Effect of inter-target lag. Classification performance averaged over Guess 1 and 2 and over time (400–550 ms) as a function of inter-target lag. e Effect of report. Mean classification performance between 400 and 550 ms for stimuli reported as Guess 1, 2, 3 and unreported stimuli. The red dotted line represents chance. Asterisks represent results from signed rank tests (*P _FDR < 0.05; **P _FDR < 0.01; ***P _FDR <0.001, FDR corrected across stimulus positions). For display purposes, data points were smoothed using a moving average with a window of three samples