Exogenous spatial attention selects associated novel bindings in working memory Fuentes-Guerra Toral, Águeda Botta, Fabiano Lupiáñez, Juan Talavera, Pedro Martín-Arévalo, Elisa González-García, Carlos exogenous attention event files working memory Real-world environments are complex, demanding a diverse set of cognitive functions such as attention and working memory (WM) to perform adaptive behaviors. However, exogenous attention, characterized as automatic and involuntary, has primarily been studied by focusing on spatial perception. In particular, the ability of pure exogenous retro-cues to select and prioritize not only spatial locations, but also novel stimulus–response (S-R) bindings held in WM remains largely unexplored. Here, in two experimental series, we provide evidence that pure exogenous non-predictive retro-cues can select not only space, but also associated S-R bindings held in WM. Additional evidence from a drift–diffusion model hinted at the possibility that the mechanisms through which exogenous attention selects and prioritizes WM contents depend, at least partially, on the hierarchical relevance of the different dimensions encoded within a specific representation. These results highlight the relationship between pure exogenous attention and complex WM contents and shed light on current theoretical debates about the interaction of attention, memory, and action. 2024-09-25T08:50:54Z 2024-09-25T08:50:54Z 2025 journal article Fuentes-Guerra, Á., Botta, F., Lupiáñez, J., Talavera, P., Martín-Arévalo, E., & González-García, C. (2025). Exogenous spatial attention selects associated novel bindings in working memory. Journal of Memory and Language, 140, 104571. https://hdl.handle.net/10481/95050 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jml.2024.104571 eng http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ open access Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 Internacional