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Previous research has suggested that, when operating in a distributed attention mode, the visual system automatically represents visual displays by their overall statistics, rather than their individual properties. Recent neuropsychological work shows partly preserved distributed attention in simultanagnosic patients, who are typically defined as only perceiving one object at a time. Here we assessed whether GK, a patient with simultanagnosia, shows averaging of stimulus properties when distributing his attention across a set of items. We manipulated different stimulus properties in two experiments: color shades and size. We found that, when GK was in a distributed mode of attention, he (incorrectly) identified the mean object from two classes of exemplars more than in a control condition, when only one exemplar class was present. Overall, this study suggests that automatic statistical processing of color and size is possible in simultanagnosia.

Original publication

DOI

10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2008.05.014

Type

Journal article

Journal

Neuropsychologia

Publication Date

09/2008

Volume

46

Pages

2861 - 2864

Keywords

Aged, Agnosia, Analysis of Variance, Automatic Data Processing, Color Perception, Humans, Neuropsychological Tests, Pattern Recognition, Visual, Reaction Time, Vision, Ocular