Inattentional deafness can be induced via a visually demanding task (MacDonald & Lavie, 2011). Given that this design is cross-modal, the unexpected stimulus is not defined by spatial proximity to the attended region (see Newby & Rock, 1999). Presumably, failures of awareness in this situation result from central limitations on attention. This conclusion is substantiated by the finding that the task demands influence the probability of inattentional deafness: MacDonald and Lavie (2011) found more inattentional deafness with a high-load visual task than with a low-load visual task. Consequently, we hypothesize that noticing the additional pure tone should be correlated with a central capacity measure: i.e. working memory capacity. To the extent that central limitations on attention result in failures of awareness, we should also be able to induce visual failures of awareness using a demanding auditory task. To the best of our knowledge, no previous study has induced inattentional blindness in this manner. As inattentional blindness can be induced by a high cognitive or perceptual load (Cartwright-Finch & Lavie, 2007; Fougnie & Marois, 2007), we expect that a sizable number of observers will miss the unexpected visual event while performing the auditory task. Given that the auditory task in Study 2 taps central processing resources, those subjects with greater working memory capacity should be more likely to notice the unexpected visual stimulus. In both studies, we present the unexpected stimulus during a critical trial in which the primary task has a fixed difficulty for all participants. Thus, this level of difficulty for the primary task might be less demanding for someone who is better able to perform the task, leaving more central resources available be left to detect an unexpected stimulus. Prior studies (Simons & Jensen, 2009) suggest that the ability to perform the primary task is unrelated to the probability of detecting an unexpected visual object, a finding replicated by other studies (e.g., Bredemeier & Simons, 2012). We measured each participant's threshold on the primary task so that we can test whether that effect replicates in a cross-modal task. Given that our inducing task is in a different modality from the unexpected object, we might expect individual differences in central resources to play a larger role in the noticing. If we find a relationship between working memory capacity and noticing, we will additionally determine whether the association between memory capacity and noticing is driven by the ability to perform the primary task (primary tasks threshold). If we include the primary-task performance in a first block of a regression analysis and the three working memory measures in a second block and the second block increases the explained variance of noticing in the no-attention trial we can conclude that the effect does not depend (or at least not only) on the participant's ability to solve the primary task. If, however, including the three working memory measures in a second block does not increase the explained variance of noticing in the no-attention trial we can conclude that the working memory measures do not explain variance in noticing beyond performance abilities in the primary task. It may also be a mixture of both, if we find that the ability to perform the primary task explains variance in noticing, the working memory measures, however explain additional variance when entered in a second block. Alternatively, since there are studies showing that inattentional blindness and working memory are unrelated (Bredemeier & Simons, 2012), another possible expectation is that working memory is completely unrelated to the detection of entirely unexpected objects regardless of how much the primary task exhausts central resources.