Experiment methods. (A) During the study phase, participants studied a series of words one at a time in anticipation of a later memory test. Each run was split into two word lists: “first associates” (e.g., “dog,” “shore,” “key”) and “second associates” (e.g., “cat,” “road,” “ball”), which were paired with one another. Half of the associate pairs were strongly semantically associated (e.g., “dog” and “cat”), and the other half were weakly semantically associated (e.g., “shore” and “road”). Strong semantic associates are shown here in blue, and weak semantic associates are shown in orange for demonstration purposes only; participants were not given any indication of semantic association strength. In between the study and test phases, participants completed a math distractor phase in which they saw a three-digit math problem and verified whether the solution shown was correct. During the test phase, participants verbally recalled any words that they could remember from the immediately preceding study phase, in any order. (B) ROIs: We analyzed two ROIs, left frontal and left parietal/occipital.
