Figure 1. Timeline of an experimental trial.

At the start of each trial, participants were shown a grating, which they needed either to hold in memory (VSTM condition) or to project as a mental image on the computer screen at fixation (imagery condition). During the maintenance, a masked grating was presented on 50% of trials; participants were asked to indicate whether or not they had perceived it. They were then asked to perform an orientation discrimination judgment based on the memory/imagery item; this involved indicating whether a test stimulus was tilted to the left or right relative to the memory/imagery cue. At the end of each trial, participants were asked to provide a rating of the strength of their memory or imagery on a 1-9 scale. In addition, they were asked to match the contrast of the grating held by memory/imagery to the exemplars presented on the screen. In Experiments 2 and 3, VSTM/imagery involved colored shapes (rectangle) while the visual target was the same as in Experiment 1 (see figure 1B).