Fig. 1.

Illustration of the Sternberg task. Each block started with an encoding block where participants were asked to memorize a set of letters (1, 3, 5, or 7 letters). Then, the participants were presented with one letter at a time (probe) to which they were asked to respond by pressing ‘1’ on the keypad if the probe was a foil, and by pressing ‘2’ if the probe was a target. Each WM load was presented twice in an 8-min task run.