Cueing Spatial Attention during Processing of Words and Letter Strings in Normals.
Abstract
Work with patients has shown that lesions of the posterior cortex produce a deficit that affects ability to report letters on the contralateral side of a nonsense string but has little effect on words. We have proposed that this is the result of a deficit in visual spatial attention. The current studies use cues on the left and right of foveally centered letter strings to bias visual spatial attention in normals. The studies show that the cues serve to bias report to the cued side very strongly for nonoword letter strings and are less effective the more wordlike the string becomes. These results show that covert attention controls access of letters to consciousness in those cases where spatial attention is used to organize input. (Author)
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Dec 30, 1986
- Accession Number
- ADA178110
Entities
People
- Eric Sieroff
- Michael Posner
Organizations
- Washington University in St. Louis