Elsevier

Behavioural Brain Research

Volume 71, Issues 1–2, November 1995, Pages 135-146, IN7
Behavioural Brain Research

Research report
Object segmentation and visual neglect

https://doi.org/10.1016/0166-4328(95)00044-5Get rights and content

Abstract

A major development in recent research on human visual attention has been the increasing interplay between research on normal attentional mechanisms, and accounts of unilateral neglect and extinction after brain-damage in terms of damage to these mechanisms. Although there are potential pitfalls in this approach, it has already proved useful. This is illustrated for the debate over whether segmentation processes precede spatial attention in vision. This debate began in the normal literature, but has since motivated several studies of visual neglect and extinction. These reveal that various segmentation processes can influence which region of a scene will be neglected or extinguished, implying that grouping may precede the abnormal bias in spatial attention, and showing that considerable residual processing can take place in the neglected or extinguished visual field. The extent of this residual processing is tentatively related to emerging anatomical data.

References (74)

  • R.D. Rafal

    Neglect

    Curr. Opin. Neurobiol.

    (1994)
  • M.J. Riddoch et al.

    The effect of cuing on unilateral neglect

    Neuropsychologia

    (1983)
  • G. Tassinari

    Covert orienting to non-informative cues: reaction time studies

    Behav. Brain Res.

    (1995)
  • A. Treisman et al.

    A feature-integration theory of attention

    Cogn. Psychol.

    (1980)
  • G. Vallar et al.

    The anatomy of unilateral neglect after right-hemisphere stroke lesions: a clinical/CT-scan correlation study in man

    Neuropsychologia

    (1986)
  • R. Walker et al.

    Disentangling neglect and hemianopia

    Neuropsychologia

    (1991)
  • F. Attneave

    Triangles as ambiguous figures

    Am. J. Psychol.

    (1968)
  • P. Bahnson

    Eine Untersuchung uber Symmetrie und Asymmetrie bei visuellen Wahrnehmungen

    Zeitsch. Psychol.

    (1928)
  • C. Barbieri et al.

    Patterns of neglect dissociation

    Beh. Neurol.

    (1989)
  • G.C. Baylis

    Visual attention and objects: Two-object cost with equal convexity

    J. Exp. Psychol.: Hum. Percept. Perform.

    (1994)
  • G.C. Baylis et al.

    Visual parsing and response competition: The effects of grouping

    Percept. Psychophys.

    (1992)
  • G.C. Baylis et al.

    Visual attention and objects: evidence for hierarchical coding of location

    J. Exp. Psychol.: Hum. Percept. Perform.

    (1993)
  • Baylis, G.C. and Driver, J., Figure-ground segmentation, shaoe description and attention to objects: the consequences...
  • G.C. Baylis et al.

    Visual extinction and stimulus repetition

    J. Cogn. Neurosci.

    (1993)
  • M. Behrmann et al.

    Object-centered neglect in patients with unilateral neglect: Effects of left-right coordinates of objects

    J. Cogn. Neurosci.

    (1994)
  • E. Bisiach et al.

    Hemineglect in humans

  • A. Caramazza et al.

    Levels of representation, co-ordinate frames and unilateral neglect

    Cogn. Neuropsychol.

    (1991)
  • M. Corbetta et al.

    Shifting attention in space: Direction versus visual hemifield: Psychophysics and PET

    J. Neurosci.

    (1993)
  • Desimone, R., and Duncan, J., Neural mechanisms of selective visual attention, Annu. Rev. Neurosci., in...
  • Driver, J., What can visual neglect and extinction reveal about the extent of ‘preattentive’ processing? In A. Kramer...
  • J. Driver et al.

    Movement and visual attention: the spotlight metaphor breaks down

    J. Exp. Psychol.: Hum. Percept. Perform.

    (1989)
  • Driver, J. and Baylis, G.C., Edge-assignment and figure-ground segmentation in short-term visual matching, manuscript...
  • J. Driver et al.

    Preserved figure-ground segregation and symmetry perception in visual neglect

    Nature

    (1992)
  • J. Driver et al.

    Axis-based neglect of visual shapes

    Neuropsychologia

    (1994)
  • Driver, J., Goodrich, S., Ward, R. and Rafal, R.D, Object segmentation affects both Balint's syndrome and visual...
  • J. Driver et al.

    Can visual neglect operate in object-centred coordinates?: an affirmative single-case study

    Cogn. Neuropsychol.

    (1991)
  • J. Driver et al.

    On the nonselectivity of ‘selective’ seeing: Contrasts between interference and priming in selective attention

    J. Exp. Psychol.: Hum. Percept. Perform.

    (1989)
  • Cited by (36)

    • Attention capture by salient object groupings in the neglected visual field

      2021, Cortex
      Citation Excerpt :

      As in the current study, in many previous studies, a key approach for investigating whether selective attention is required for visual object integration has been to assess brain-damaged patients with impaired attentional functioning. For instance, impairments of selective attention have been demonstrated in patients suffering from visual hemi-neglect and associated extinction behavior (Driver, 1995; Kerkhoff, 2001). Contralesional visuo-spatial neglect is characterized by the failure to attend, respond adequately, or orient voluntarily to stimuli in the contralesional hemispace (Karnath, Milner, & Vallar, 2002; Kerkhoff, 2001).

    • Attention as the ‘glue’ for object integration in parietal extinction

      2018, Cortex
      Citation Excerpt :

      Accordingly, the lack of attention to stimuli on the contralesional side is a relative, rather than an absolute, deficit, with fewer attentional resources allocated to the contralesional, as compared to the ipsilesional, hemifield (Bays, Singh-Curry, Gorgoraptis, Driver, & Husain, 2010; Gögler, Finke, Keller, Müller, & Conci, 2016). Despite their extinction behavior, these patients display preserved access to complete objects (Driver, 1995, for review). Intact processing has, for instance, been reported in a variety of studies that presented stimulus fragments that had to be grouped across the two hemifields to form a complete object for explicit report (Brooks, Wong, & Robertson, 2005; Driver, Baylis, & Rafal, 1992; Gilchrist, Humphreys, & Riddoch, 1996; Marshall & Halligan, 1994; Pavlovskaya, Sagi, Soroker, & Ring, 1997; Ro & Rafal, 1996; Robertson, Eglin, & Knight, 2003; Vuilleumier & Landis, 1998; Vuilleumier, Valenza, & Landis, 2001; Ward, Goodrich, & Driver, 1994).

    • Emotional processing and its impact on unilateral neglect and extinction

      2012, Neuropsychologia
      Citation Excerpt :

      It remains unclear, however, whether the N170 is generated in the fusiform gyri and/or other cortical regions (George et al., 1999; Kanwisher et al., 1997). In any case, both the behavioral (Fox, 2002a; Vuilleumier, 2000) and neurophysiological data (Vuilleumier, Sagiv, et al., 2001) converge to support the idea that face analysis and categorization may take place in the intact early visual processing stages of the ventral occipito-temporal stream, before information from the contralesional field is influenced by top-down attention and selected (or not) for conscious awareness (Driver, 1995; Rafal, 1994; Ward & Goodrich, 1996). Over and above faces in themselves, faces with emotional expressions may exert further influences on spatial neglect.

    • Are objects the same as groups? ERP correlates of spatial attentional guidance by irrelevant feature similarity

      2011, Brain Research
      Citation Excerpt :

      While numerous studies have focused on interactions between perception and attention systems (for recent reviews, e.g., Beck and Kastner, 2009; Carrasco, 2006; Hopf et al., 2005; Van der Stigchel et al., 2009), object-based attention has been characterized as a function of the bottom-up control of attentional deployment, which is based on perceptual processing that constructs object representations (e.g., Desimone and Duncan, 1995). A consistent notion is that objects are the most fundamental units of attentional selection (for reviews, see Driver and Baylis, 1998; Scholl, 2001), which has been proposed based on convergent evidence that representations of task-irrelevant spatial locations/features are facilitated if they belong to the same object or group as a task-relevant location/feature, in behavioral experimental psychology studies (e.g., Driver and Baylis, 1989; Duncan, 1984; Egly et al., 1994; Kramer and Jacobson, 1991), neuroimaging studies (e.g., Martínez et al., 2006; Müller and Kleinschmidt, 2003; O'Craven et al., 1999; Schoenfeld et al., 2003), and neuropsychology studies in brain-damaged patients (e.g., Driver, 1995; Humphreys, 1999). Object-based attentional selection appears consistent with our rapid and effortless cognition and action toward objects in daily life.

    • Shifting attention in viewer- and object-based reference frames after unilateral brain injury

      2011, Neuropsychologia
      Citation Excerpt :

      Whether performance is ameliorated by reorienting from one object into another or by reorienting within one central object, both findings confirm that object information can be utilized despite impaired visual spatial awareness. Thus, the presence of an object or a group of objects (preattentively) influences the distribution of an attentional deficit (e.g., Boutsen & Humphreys, 2000; Brooks, Wong & Robertson, 2005; Driver, 1995; Driver, Baylis & Rafal, 1992; Gilchrist, Humphreys, & Riddoch, 1996; Grabowecky, Robertson & Treisman, 1993; Mattingley et al., 1997; Pavlovskaya, Sagi, Soroker, & Ring, 1997; Ward, Goodrich, & Driver, 1994). In our study, contralesional and ipsilesional object-based effects were not related within an individual, indicating that object-based sensitivity is not uniform across viewer-based space.

    View all citing articles on Scopus
    View full text