Attentional distraction affects maintenance of information in visual sensory memory Botta, Fabiano Martín Arévalo, Elisa Bartolomeo, Paolo Lupiáñez Castillo, Juan Visual short-term memory Sensory memory Attention Special thanks to Violeta Medialdea Morillas and to Carolina Delgado García for the recollection of data from Experiment 2 and Experiment 3 respectively. This research was funded by MCIN/AEI/ 10.13039/501100011033 (grant PID2020-118214 GB-I00 and grant PID2020-114790 GB-100 research projects to FB and JL). Funding: FB was supported by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness and by the European Regional Development Fund (research project PSI2015- 73503-JIN). JL was supported by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (PSI2017-84926-P). EMA was supported by a Juan de la Cierva postdoctoral fellowship from the Spanish Ministry of Economy, Industry and Competitiveness (IJCI-2015–23204). Classical theoretical models suggest that visual short-term memory can be divided in two main memory systems: sensory memory, a short-lasting but high-capacity memory storage and working memory, a long-lasting but low-capacity memory store. Whilst, previous research has systematically shown a strong interplay between attentional mechanisms and working memory, less clear is the role of attention in sensory memory. In the present study we approach this issue by asking whether withdrawing attentional resources by a dual task (Experiment 1) or by presenting task irrelevant information during memory maintenance (Experiment 2 and 3) similarly or differently affect sensory and working memory. Overall, results showed that sensory memory content was undermined not only by a simultaneous high-demanding cognitive task but even when purely task-irrelevant and non-masking visual distractors were presented during maintenance. Our data provide support against theories that consider sensory memories as a case of visual awareness free of attention. 2026-01-27T11:39:36Z 2026-01-27T11:39:36Z 2023 journal article Publisher version: Botta, F.; Martín Arévalo, E.; Bartolomeo, P. y Lupiáñez Castillo, J. (2023). Attentional distraction affects maintenance of information in visual sensory memory. Consciousness and Cognition Volume 107, January 2023, 103453. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.concog.2022.103453 1053-8100 1090-2376 https://hdl.handle.net/10481/110339 10.1016/j.concog.2022.103453 eng http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ open access Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 Internacional Elsevier