Fig. 1

Schematic illustration of the intention offloading task from a previous study (Gilbert, 2015a). Prior to each trial, participants were presented with an instruction (a), informing them about three target circles. They were then faced with 10, randomly arranged circles (b). In some phases of the task, people were free to set reminders by placing the target circles close to their instructed border (c). The main task was to move the circles out of the bottom of the square in numeric order (d). Before the first target circle was reached, an arithmetic verification task was presented (e). After submitting a response, participants continued with the next circle, in this example by moving the first target circle off the square (f). The trial ended once all circles had been removed