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There is broad consensus supporting the reciprocal influence of working memory (WM) and attention. Top-down mechanisms operate to cope with either environmental or internal demands. In that sense, it is possible to select an item within the contents of WM to endow it with prioritized access. Although evidence supports that maintaining an item in this privileged state does not rely on sustained visual attention, it is unknown whether selection within WM depends on perceptual attention. To answer this question, we recorded electrophysiological neural activity while participants performed a retro-cue task in which we inserted a detection task in the delay period after retro-cue presentation. Critically, the onset of to-be-detected near threshold stimuli was unpredictable, and thus, sustained perceptual spatial attention was needed to accomplish the detection task from the offset of the retro-cue. At a behavioral level, we found decreased visual detection when a WM representation was retro-cued. At a neural level, alpha oscillatory activity confirmed a spatial shift of attention to the retro-cued representation. We interpret the convergence of neural oscillations and behavioral data to point towards the theory that selection within WM could be accomplished through a perceptual attentional mechanism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The online version of the original article can be found at https://doi.org/10.3758/s13423-022-02238-2Correction to: Psychon Bull Revhttps://doi.org/10.3758/s13423-022-02238-2Joaquín Macedo-Pascual · Almudena Capilla · Pablo Campo3 · José Antonio Hinojosa1,4,5 · Claudia PochThis paper has been updated with open access.Publisher's noteSpringer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.By Joaquín Macedo-Pascual; Almudena Capilla; Pablo Campo; José Antonio Hinojosa and Claudia PochReported by Author; Author; Author; Author; Author [Extracted from the article]