Journal article
What are you looking at?: Impaired ‘social attention’ following frontal-lobe damage
Neuropsychologia, Vol.42(12), pp.1657-1665
2004
DOI: 10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2004.04.009
PMID: 15327932
Abstract
Humans are able to predict the behavior of others. Several studies have investigated this capability by determining if social cues, such as eye gaze direction, can influence the allocation of visual attention. When a viewer sees a face looking to the left, the viewer’s attention is allocated in the gazed-at direction. These ‘social attention’ studies have asked if this allocation of attention is automatic or under voluntary control. In this paper, we show that a patient with frontal-lobe damage is impaired at allocating attention to peripheral locations voluntarily, although attention can be allocated there automatically. The patient, EVR, can use peripheral cues to selectively process one location over another but cannot use symbolic cues (words) to allocate attention. EVR is also impaired in using eye gaze cues to allocate attention, suggesting that ‘social attention’ may involve frontal-lobe processes that control voluntary, not automatic, shifts of visuospatial attention.
Details
- Title: Subtitle
- What are you looking at?: Impaired ‘social attention’ following frontal-lobe damage
- Creators
- Shaun P Vecera - Department of Psychology, E11 Seashore Hall, University of Iowa, Iowa City, IA 52242-1407, USAMatthew Rizzo - Department of Neurology and College of Engineering, University of Iowa, Iowa City, IA, USA
- Resource Type
- Journal article
- Publication Details
- Neuropsychologia, Vol.42(12), pp.1657-1665
- Publisher
- Elsevier Ltd
- DOI
- 10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2004.04.009
- PMID
- 15327932
- ISSN
- 0028-3932
- eISSN
- 1873-3514
- Language
- English
- Date published
- 2004
- Academic Unit
- Neurology; Psychological and Brain Sciences; Iowa Neuroscience Institute
- Record Identifier
- 9984066135202771
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