Fig. 1: Experimental design.

a Participants underwent encoding and retrieval sessions across a short delay of 10 min and a long delay of 3 days in the fMRI scanner. Participants were counterbalanced across delays according to the depicted structure. Encoding fMRI data was not analyzed for the present experiment. b During encoding participants viewed a series of objects, each paired with one of four repeating scenes (two beaches/two kitchens) and indicated whether the object was related to the background scene. Participants did not view the names of the scenes during encoding, rather, they learned the names of the scenes and practiced visualizing them in detail prior to beginning the experiment. c During retrieval participants were asked to imagine the scene associated with a presented object in as much detail as possible, and to indicate which context the object had been paired with (kitchen or beach), as well as which specific scene (which kitchen or which beach). Trials for which participants remembered the context a given object was paired with but not the scene were scored as coarse memories, and trials for which they remembered the context and specific scene were scored as detailed memories. Dark gray circles over responses here represent example responses. Scene and object images presented here are placeholders used for illustrative purposes. Objects were retrieved from the bank of standardized stimuli (BOSS) database (Copyright (C) 2009, 2010 Mathieu Brodeur)¹⁰⁰. Beach A photo by Rowan Heuvel, Beach B photo by Pedro Monteiro, Kitchen A photo by Sidekix Media, Kitchen B photo by Zac Gudakov, all on Unsplash: https://unsplash.com/license.