FIGURE 2.

Trial timeline for the Games-based condition, with main epochs of interest indicated in capitals. In this condition, participants were asked to study the learning content carefully (which was presented twice in the block to encourage rehearsal, but always with a novel question) before answering a question in return for points that could be doubled or lost on a wheel of fortune. At the same time, a competitor in the control room was trying to accumulate points in the same way. Responses of participant and competitor were hidden from each other until the correct answer was revealed, and both were required to decide whether they would be gaming on the wheel of fortune, should their answer be correct, before this outcome was known. The points available for a correct answer escalated over the block from 1 to 19. The duration of each trial was 50.4 s resulting in each the three conditions of 20 trials lasting 16 min and 48 s and, allowing for a momentary pause between conditions, a total functional scanning time of approximately 51 min.