Toward a taxonomy of spatial neglect

Abstract

There has been an increasing recognition over the past ten years that neglect is not a unitary phenomenon. Some years ago, Heilman, Valenstein, and Watson (1985a) went to some trouble to distinguish between a group of symptoms that are clinically recognisable and logically distinct within the “neglect syndrome”, and proposed a standardised terminology. Their symptomatological taxonomy has been useful in ordering our thinking and in facilitating our communication (e.g. Milner, 1987). Heilman et al. (1985a) went further, by pointing out that there were double dissociations among some of these neglect symptoms; in other words (despite the title of their chapter) there really was no such thing as a “syndrome” of neglect.