The complex relationship between attention and STM forms a core issue in the study of human cognition, and Cowan's target article attempts, quite successfully, to elucidate an important part of this relationship. However, while I agree that aspects of STM performance may reflect the action mechanisms that we normally consider to subserve “attention” I shall argue here that attention is not subject to a fixed four-object capacity limit as Cowan suggests. Rather, performance in attention tasks as well as STM may be best accounted for in terms of decay and interference.