The Relation Between Spatial Attention and Reading: Evidence from the Neglect Syndrome

Abstract

We present results from two experiments which demonstrate that the nature of the stimulus in central vision effects the distribution of spatial attention in patients with unilateral neglect. We replicated Sieroff, Pollatsek, and Posner's (1988) finding that neglect patients make fewer errors reading the contra-lesional sides of words than nonwords, and extended their paradigm to assess the distribution of spatial attention in this task. Using two different tasks to assess the distribution of spatial attention; naming die colour of the ink in which letters were written, and bisecting lines presented directly under the letter strings; we found evidence of greater contralesional attention during the reading of words than nonwords. This has two general implications. First, the word superiority reported by Sieroff et al. can be explained by changes in the allocation of attention during word reading, and therefore need not imply that word reading is attention-free. Second, the allocation of attention in neglect is sensitive to lexical status, implying that the parietal lobe directs attention at least partly as a function of the nature of the stimuli in central vision, and not merely as a function of absolute spatial location in viewer-centred or environment-centred co-ordinates.