Citation

Abrams RA, Law MB. Exp. Brain Res. 2002; 142(3): 349-353.

Affiliation

Department of Psychology, Washington University, St. Louis, MO 63130, USA. rabrams@artsci.wustl.edu

Copyright

(Copyright © 2002, Holtzbrinck Springer Nature Publishing Group)

DOI

10.1007/s00221-001-0899-2

PMID

11819043

Abstract

Object-based visual attention is observed when the benefit of attending to one element in a display extends to other elements that are part of the same perceptual object. Apperceptive agnosia is an object identification deficit in which spatial attention is preserved but object-based attention is impaired. Some debate exists regarding the extent to which the object-based impairment can be attributed to perceptual mechanisms that are specifically involved in grouping and segmentation of a scene, as opposed to early sensory processes. In the present paper we show that random visual noise is sufficient to eliminate the object benefit, a result inconsistent with the view that grouping mechanisms are responsible for the effect. The results have implications for an understanding of apperceptive agnosia, and for an understanding of object-based attention more generally.

Language: en