Selective attention in hemispatial neglect

S. Z. Rapcsak, M. Verfaellie, W. S. Fleet and K. M. Heilman
Department of Neurology, University of Florida College of Medicine, Veterans Administration, Gainesville.

To determine how increasing demands on visual selective attention affect the symptoms of hemispatial neglect, we studied patients with right hemispheric lesions on a cancellation task requiring various degrees of focused attention. In the target only condition, the patients were to cancel all stimuli. In the target-nontarget condition, discriminating targets from nontargets did not require close scrutiny, whereas in the target-foil condition, discriminating targets from foils required greater attention to detail. Our findings indicate that increasing demands on visual selective attention adversely affect both exploration of the left side of space and visual discrimination.

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