Fig. 1

Experimental design. a Across all experiments, subjects studied sets of overlapping word-image pairs (AB, AC pairs). Overlap was created by pairing two images (B and C terms) with the same word (A term). b Across all experiments, all AB pairs were studied (AB Study phase) and tested (AB Test phase) before AC pairs were studied/tested (AC Study phase/AC Test phase). The AC Test phase contained a critical manipulation in which each test trial was preceded by a briefly presented distractor image (200 ms). For Experiments 1–4, the distractor image was either a phase-scrambled version of the B image (Scrambled condition), a novel image from the same visual category as the B image (Novel condition), or the original B image (Old condition). For the behavioral pilot of the fMRI experiment and for the fMRI experiment, the Scrambled condition was eliminated.