Chapter 7 Explaining object-based deficits in unilateral neglect without object-based frames of reference

Abstract

Publisher Summary This chapter discusses the object-based attentional effects that can be obtained without object-based frames of reference. Determining which reference frame or frames are used by the brain to encode visual features is a key step to understanding the mechanisms of visual cognition, most importantly object recognition. The chapter discusses the behavioral experiments that have been designed to dissociate various reference frames and determine the contribution of each to neglect. In several experiments, patients show a deficit in attentional allocation that depends not merely on the location of an object with respect to the viewer, but on the extent, shape or movement of the object itself. From this finding of object-based attentional effects, the inference is often made that, attentional allocation operates in an object-based frame of reference, and consequently, object-based representations are key to visual information processing. It is concluded that this inference is not logically necessary, object-based attentional effects can be obtained without object based reference frames.