Niklaus M Singmann H Oberauer K 2019 In working memory research, individual items are sometimes said to be in the "focus of attention". According to one view, this occurs for the last item in a sequentially presented list (last-item benefit). According to a second view, this occurs when items are externally cued during the retention interval (retro-cue benefit). We investigated both phenomena at the same time to determine whether both result from the same cognitive mechanisms. If that were the case, retro-cue benefits should be reduced when the retro-cue is directed to the item that already benefits from being presented last. We measured speed-accuracy-tradeoff functions with the response-deadline paradigm to measure retrieval dynamics in a short-term recognition task. Across three experiments, we found that retro-cues benefited the last item and other items to the same extent. The additivity of the last-item benefit and the retro-cue benefit points towards the co-existence of at least two distinct forms of attentional prioritization in working memory. application/pdf https://sonar.ch/global/documents/4282 eng info:eu-repo/semantics/altIdentifier/doi/10.1016/j.cognition.2018.11.015 info:eu-repo/semantics/altIdentifier/pmid/30551034 info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess Cognition. - 2019 Attention Focus of attention Hierarchical-Bayes Recency Retro-cue Speed-accuracy trade-off Working memory Adult Attention Cues Female Humans Male Memory, Short-Term Psychomotor Performance Reading Recognition, Psychology Signal Detection, Psychological Young Adult Two distinct mechanisms of selection in working memory: Additive last-item and retro-cue benefits. http://purl.org/coar/resource_type/c_6501