Elsevier

Neuropsychologia

Volume 35, Issue 9, September 1997, Pages 1233-1249
Neuropsychologia

A restricted ‘spotlight’ of attention in visual object recognition

https://doi.org/10.1016/S0028-3932(97)00049-3Get rights and content

Abstract

We describe a patient (NJ), with a progressive visual disturbance, who showed an impairment in identifying larger visually-presented objects relative to their smaller counterparts. NJ showed this size effect for line drawings of objects, words and single letters. When presented with large letters comprised of smaller letters and asked to give speeded identification responses to either the large or small letters, NJ was grossly impaired at identifying the large letter. Additionally, when presented with a context meant to bias responding to either the large or small letter, NJ showed faster and more accurate responding in the small direction, but not in the large direction. We interpret these results as indicative of an impaired ‘spotlight’ of attention, which is deployed across the visual array, and is necessary for providing the selective visual attention responsible for the integration of visual features.

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    Presented in part at the Second Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Neuroscience Society, San Francisco, CA. March 1995.

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