Abstract
Selective attention plays a prominent role in prioritizing information in working memory (WM), improving performance for attended representations. However, the consequences of selection for unattended WM representations are less clear, with mixed findings regarding information loss for unattended items. Here we tested the theory that within WM, selectively attending to an item and the decision to stop storing another item are independent mechanisms. We recorded EEG while participants performed a WM recall task in which the item most likely to be tested was cued retrospectively. By manipulating retro-cue reliability (i.e. the ratio of valid to invalid cue trials) we varied the incentive to retain uncued items. The cued item was initially attended equally following highly reliable and less reliable cues, as indexed by contralateral alpha (8-14 Hz) power suppression. Non-cued items were dropped from WM, as indexed by contralateral delay activity (CDA), but only for highly reliable cues. Later in the retention interval this pattern reversed. Selective attention was sustained only following highly reliably cues, while uncued items were dropped also for less reliable cues. These results show that attention and storage in WM are distinct processes that can behave differently depending on the relative importance of WM representations.
