Souza AS Oberauer K 2017 We investigated the role of two kinds of attention-visual and central attention-for the maintenance of visual representations in working memory (WM). In Experiment 1 we directed attention to individual items in WM by presenting cues during the retention interval of a continuous delayed-estimation task, and instructing participants to think of the cued items. Attending to items improved recall commensurate with the frequency with which items were attended (0, 1, or 2 times). Experiments 1 and 3 further tested which kind of attention-visual or central-was involved in WM maintenance. We assessed the dual-task costs of two types of distractor tasks, one tapping sustained visual attention and one tapping central attention. Only the central attention task yielded substantial dual-task costs, implying that central attention substantially contributes to maintenance of visual information in WM. Experiment 2 confirmed that the visual-attention distractor task was demanding enough to disrupt performance in a task relying on visual attention. We combined the visual-attention and the central-attention distractor tasks with a multiple object tracking (MOT) task. Distracting visual attention, but not central attention, impaired MOT performance. Jointly, the three experiments provide a double dissociation between visual and central attention, and between visual WM and visual object tracking: Whereas tracking multiple targets across the visual filed depends on visual attention, visual WM depends mostly on central attention. application/pdf https://sonar.ch/global/documents/128391 eng info:eu-repo/semantics/altIdentifier/doi/10.3758/s13414-017-1357-y info:eu-repo/semantics/altIdentifier/pmid/28600676 info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess Attention, perception & psychophysics. - 2017 Attention Dual-task costs Multiple object tracking Refreshing Working memory Attention Cues Female Humans Male Memory, Short-Term Mental Recall Photic Stimulation Psychomotor Performance Visual Perception Young Adult The contributions of visual and central attention to visual working memory. http://purl.org/coar/resource_type/c_6501