Experimental design. (A) Encoding: Example trials from each of the two scanned encoding tasks (plausibility, valence). In both tasks, subjects were instructed to vividly imagine the referent of the noun in the color presented and to decide either whether this combination was plausible (plausibility task), or whether it was appealing (valence task). If subjects could not imagine the referent of the noun in the given color, a separate button was pressed and those trials were excluded from all analyses. (B) Three-step surprise recognition memory test (unscanned and self-paced), consisting of the assessment of item memory (old/new judgment), associated item-related detail (color memory), and associated item–context detail (task memory). Note that the task memory test was not contingent on the response on the color memory test and vice versa. Question mark responses were allowed to avoid forced-choice guesses.