Figure 1.

Experimental design. Upper half: Displayed is one example of a subliminal encoding trial and its corresponding retrieval trial. Each experimental run consisted of 6 consecutive encoding trials, a consolidation period of 3 min, and the corresponding 6 consecutive retrieval trials. Scenes were rotated between encoding and retrieval (0°, 90°, 180°, or 270°) with a constant rotation angle per run. Displayed is a 90°‐rotation. For subliminal encoding, a scene with two central objects was presented for 17 ms, flanked by pattern masks, in 12 repetitions in a time window of 6 s. Participants performed an attention task during subliminal encoding, which required them to fixate the center of the screen and to indicate the orientation of a line segment. There were two indirect retrieval tests of object–location associations. For the first test, a single object cue was presented subliminally (12 repetitions) to trigger the reactivation of object–location associations. Then, the scene came up visibly (“free view”), absent the objects, with the two previously occupied locations highlighted. Participants viewed the scene over 6 s for eye movement measurements. For the second (“forced‐choice”) test, the same object cue was presented visibly below the scene to trigger the reactivation of object–location associations. Participants indicated which highlighted location was a better fit for that object. Lower half: Illustration of scene rotation between subliminal encoding and implicit retrieval tasks. Scene perspective during subliminal encoding was always constant (0° rotation). For the implicit retrieval tasks, perspective on the scene could remain the same as during encoding (0°) or rotate for 90°, 180°, or 270°. This perspective was held constant throughout the six retrieval trials for a given scene [Color figure can be viewed at http://wileyonlinelibrary.com]