Figure 3.

Schematic of a trial in the priming task in Experiment 1. Participants were presented with still-halves and were asked to judge whether or not both halves matched—that is, whether both halves belonged to the same original still. The still-halves were initially covered by salt-and-pepper noise (black and white pixels superimposed on the still), and became progressively clearer over 6 sec, as 20% of the noise pixels were removed every 1250 msec. The fully revealed still-halves remained on screen for up to 2 sec further. Participants could make a response at any point in these 8 sec (either with some noise or fully clear), with the trial terminating upon a response. This figure is for illustration and thus not to scale. Stimuli in the actual experiment were in color (not black-and-white).