Department of Psychology, Ludwig-Maximilians-University, Munich, Germany.
Department of Psychology, Ludwig-Maximilians-University, Munich, Germany; Hans Berger Department of Neurology, University Hospital Jena, Germany.
Cortex. 2021 May;138:228-240. doi: 10.1016/j.cortex.2021.02.011. Epub 2021 Feb 24.
The integration of fragmentary parts into coherent whole objects has been proposed either to rely on the availability of attentional resources or to arise automatically, that is, from preattentive processing (prior to the engagement of selective attention). In the present study, these two alternative accounts were tested in a group of neglect patients with right-hemisphere parietal brain damage and associated deficits of selective attention in the left (visual) hemispace. The reported experiment employed a search task that required detection of targets in the left and/or right hemifields, which were embedded in configurations that consisted of variants of Kanizsa figures. The results showed that a salient, grouped Kanizsa triangle presented within the unattended, left hemifield can substantially improve contralesional target detection, though the very same triangle configuration does not facilitate target detection in the impaired hemifield when presented together with an ipsilesional, but non-salient (i.e., structurally non-integrated, isolated) target. That is, attention is captured by the grouped object in the impaired hemispace only when it is not engaged in the processing of an (isolated) object in the attended hemispace. This demonstrates that both part-to-whole-object integration and search guidance by salient, integrated objects crucially require attentional resources.
将零碎的部分整合为连贯的整体对象的方式，要么依赖于注意力资源的可用性，要么自动发生，也就是说，来自非注意加工（在选择性注意的参与之前）。在本研究中，这两种替代解释在一组具有右顶叶脑损伤和左侧（视觉）半空间选择性注意力缺陷的忽略症患者中进行了测试。所报告的实验采用了一种搜索任务，要求在左半视野和/或右半视野中检测目标，这些目标嵌入由 Kanizsa 图形变体组成的配置中。结果表明，在未被注意的左半视野中呈现一个突出的、分组的 Kanizsa 三角形，可以显著提高对对侧目标的检测，尽管当与同侧但非突出的（即结构上非整合的、孤立的）目标一起呈现时，同一三角形配置并不能促进损伤半视野中的目标检测。也就是说，只有当注意力没有被用于处理注意半视野中的（孤立的）物体时，分组的物体才会在损伤的半空间中被注意力捕获。这表明，整体对象的部分到整体的整合和由突出的、整合的对象进行搜索引导都需要注意力资源。
