Selective Attention in Musical Working Memory: Evidence from a Melodic Retro-Cue Task

Working memory plays a central role in music cognition, supporting the encoding, maintenance and manipulation of musical information during listening and performance. A critical component of working memory is the ability to selectively prioritise relevant information, though we know little about how attentional prioritisation operates specifically within musical working memory. This study introduces the melodic retro-cue task (MRCT), a novel adaptation of the retro-cue paradigm using musical sequences to investigate selective attention in musical working memory. In experiment 1 ( N  = 106), participants completed the MRCT under three cueing conditions (valid, invalid, neutral) and two modalities (audio-only, audiovisual). Retro-cue validity enhanced discrimination sensitivity ( d′ ), with valid cues producing the greatest improvement over neutral. Musical training positively predicted d′ throughout, and sensitivity was further modulated by task difficulty in non-musicians though not by presentation modality in musicians. Experiment 2 ( N  = 28) evaluated concurrent validity by comparing MRCT performance with established working memory measures, including the n-back, digit span, melody span and spatial span. We replicated the valid retro-cue benefit to melodic discrimination sensitivity. MRCT performance correlated significantly with melody span but not with non-musical working memory tasks, indicating domain-specific processing. Together, these findings provide an initial validation of the MRCT as a novel measure of attentional prioritisation in musical working memory and suggest selective attention as a key mechanism shaping how musical information is maintained and prioritised in memory.