D'Erme P, Robertson I, Bartolomeo P, Daniele A, Gainotti G
Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Rome, Italy.
Neuropsychologia. 1992 Nov;30(11):989-1000. doi: 10.1016/0028-3932(92)90050-v.
A specific disruption in the ability to automatically disengage attention from its previous focus has been hypothesized to account for the extinction phenomenon often observed in the unilateral spatial neglect syndrome. Recent literature, however, also brings out the role played in neglect by an imbalance in the attentional orienting systems, resulting in an early shift of attention towards the side of space ipsilateral to the brain lesion. In the present study we hypothesized that this attentional bias in orienting of attention might be demonstrated in a paradigm of simple reaction time to lateralized visual stimuli by contrasting the presence vs the absence on the computer screen of the square boxes used to facilitate position expectancy. A main prediction was made that patients with neglect would show a significant increase in reaction time to contralateral visual stimuli in the presence of bilateral reference boxes as compared to conditions in which no boxes were displayed. The right-sided box was in fact expected to exert an early attraction on the patient's attention, thus modifying the pattern of reaction times to the proper targets. This prediction was confirmed in right brain-damaged patients with moderate to severe neglect.
一种关于无法自动将注意力从先前焦点上脱离的特定障碍，被假定为可解释在单侧空间忽视综合征中经常观察到的消退现象。然而，近期文献也揭示了注意力定向系统失衡在忽视中所起的作用，这导致注意力过早地转向与脑损伤同侧的空间一侧。在本研究中，我们假设这种注意力定向偏差可能会在对侧化视觉刺激的简单反应时范式中表现出来，通过对比计算机屏幕上用于促进位置预期的方形框的有无来进行研究。我们做出的一个主要预测是，与未显示框的情况相比，在双侧有参考框的情况下，患有忽视症的患者对侧视觉刺激的反应时会显著增加。事实上，预计右侧的框会对患者的注意力产生早期吸引，从而改变对适当目标的反应时模式。这一预测在患有中度至重度忽视的右脑损伤患者中得到了证实。
