Task and stimuli in the Memory Delay experiment.

Each trial starts with a green cube appearing in front of the participant’s chest. 500 ms after the cube is touched, the pink target sphere appears along a 60-degree arc at arm’s length. 1200 ms later, a tone indicates that a participant is free to reach out to the target. When participant’s index finger passes through the arc, it explodes and the trial ends. A new cube appears to begin the new trial. A) In the standard condition, the target remained visible for the entire trial. B) In the memory delay condition, the target disappeared 200 ms after its appearance, remaining invisible for the 1000ms before the tone was played and during the subsequent reach movement. For a video of this experiment, see supporting information S2 Video.