Fig. 5: Feature (orientation) selectivity for RSVP items derived using forward encoding modelling of multivariate patterns of EEG activity in Experiment 2.

a Forward encoding results aligned at the time of item onset and the presented orientation across all participants. All representations have been re-aligned so that the presented orientation is equivalent to 0°. b Forward encoding results averaged over 50 ms bins (shown by corresponding colour in (a) following each item. Feature-selectivity peaks around 50–120 ms after the onset of each item and persists for ~200 ms. c Forward encoding results for each item in the RSVP stream. Vertical black lines indicate the presentation time of each of the 20 items within the RSVP stream. The dotted horizontal line indicates the presented orientation. The colour scale is the same as in panel (a). d Gaussian distributions were fitted to each participant’s data for each item in the stream, with the gain showing feature selectivity. The red horizontal line segments underneath each trace indicate timepoints over which feature selectivity was significantly different from zero (i.e., where feature selectivity was greater than what would be expected by chance; two-tailed, sign-flipping cluster-permutation, alpha p < 0.05, cluster alpha p < 0.05, N permutations = 20,000), which occurs immediately following item presentation. Across all panels shading indicates ∓1 standard error of the mean across participants. a.u. = arbitrary units.