From attentional prioritization to enhanced memory, self-cues trigger a variety of effects within human cognition. Recent work suggests that self-reference may also enhance working memory, possibly via attentional prioritization. However, there is no direct evidence that self-cues enhance working memory capacity, or that such boosts covary with individuals' attentional function. Here, we provide the first direct evidence of enhanced working memory capacity for self-referential cues, independent of attentional processing. We adapted a verbal working memory complex span to create a 'Self' condition (featuring the participant's own name), 'Other' condition (featuring a non-self-name), and Control condition (with no name), in 7-9-year-old children (Exp.1, N = 71) and adults (Exp.2, N = 52). In both experiments, the Self condition elicited significantly higher spans than the other conditions (Exp 1: p <
.001, η