DOI 10.1007/s00426-011-0343-6ORIGINAL ARTICLE Searching working memory for the source of dual-task costs

Abstract Dual-task costs depend on the speciWc pairings of stimulus and response modalities. Such Wndings are anal-ogous to domain-speciWc eVects in the working memory (WM) literature, in which items compete for limited capac-ity when they involve related types of information. The present study explicitly examines the relationship between modality-pairing eVects on dual-task costs and domain-speciWcity eVects on WM capacity. Participants maintained a sequence of either locations or tones in WM, and then performed a choice reaction time task in which they responded either vocally or manually. The stimuli for the choice reaction time task were held constant, but its response modality aVected the interference observed in WM: vocal responses interfered with WM for tones and manual responses interfered with WM for locations. These Wndings indicate that response selection engages domain-speciWc WM processes and that interference within these processes may account for modality-pairing eVects