Figure 2.

Schematic depicting the overall design of the imagery-generation incidental recall task. (A) Participants pressed the right mouse button to begin each trial (1). Upon clicking the mouse, an alerting beep was sounded, followed 250 ms later by the display of a noun-cue at the center of the screen (2). Participants were instructed to read the cue silently and as quickly as possible. They were immediately asked to generate an image that corresponded to the noun-cue (3). When participants felt that their mental image generation was at its most vivid state, they pressed the right mouse button (4). Upon pressing the button, another alerting beep was sounded, followed 250 ms later by a horizontal array of seven choices appearing near the bottom of the screen (5). From left to right, each button was labeled with one of seven vividness level descriptions in a seven-point scale format: ((1), “no image”; (2), “very vague/dim”; (3), “vague/dim”; (4), “not vivid”; (5), “moderately vivid”; (6), “very vivid”; and (7), “perfectly vivid”). Following the vividness response during the rating procedure, the array of buttons disappeared, and the display reverted back to a screen instructing the participant to click the mouse when they were ready to begin the next trial (6). A minimum of 5 s was needed between vividness response and the start of the next trial. (B) After completing the image generation phase, participants were told to take a break and fill out paperwork, including a debriefing session. (C) Exactly 30 min from their last trial, participants were asked to recall as many of the noun cues as possible on a blank excel spreadsheet (7).