I recently started using android actionbars and contextual action bars (CAB).
I have just one activity which is a ListActivity. Basically I use the following code snippe
I've only ever tested this in CHOICE_MODE_SINGLE, but in that situation it works by doing the following.
When you select a list item, in code, call "setItemChecked(position, checked)" method (on the ListView instance) for that item in the list.
Add this to the XML for individual ListView items:
android:background="?android:attr/activatedBackgroundIndicator"