Fig. 2.

Procedures and timings.

Note. Words task – Encoding: Participants saw a prompt ‘Does this word describe you/[chosen other]?’ followed by the target word (e.g. kind) and then submitted their rating on a slider from 0 ‘Does not describe me/her at all’ to 10 ‘Totally describes me/her’. Shapes task: Participants saw a fixation cross, followed by the target stimulus (shape-label pair, any combination of circle/square-you/her), and responded to the prompt ‘Match?’ by pressing left or right arrow key for ‘yes’ or ‘no’ (counterbalanced). Participants were given feedback in the form of a smiley or sad face. Words task – Retrieval: Participants saw a prompt ‘Have you seen this word before?’, followed by the target word (e.g. ‘musical’) and responded by pressing the left or right arrow key for ‘yes’ or ‘no’ (counterbalanced). Timeline of procedure (bottom panel): Participants received both verbal and written instructions. They then completed descriptiveness ratings, the shapes task and matrix reasoning task, the surprise recognition memory test and finally the self-consciousness scale.