Background

Most neglect treatment studies focus on automatic re-orientation procedures, assuming a deficit in automatic processes. We compare an automatic- and a controlled procedure, using the endogenous and exogenous variants of Posner’s covert shift of attention task.

Method

In two experiments, neglect patients and patients with a right hemispherical stroke without neglect performed three blocks of Posner’s covert shift of attention task (Posner Task) on two days. In Study 1 we used endogenous cues, in Study 2, exogenous cues.

Results

In the endogenous task, neglect patients improved significantly with valid left-sided cues between block 1 and 2 on Day 1, subsequently showing a plateauing. They also showed a gradual improvement on invalid trials on both days. In the exogenous condition, all participants responded only increasingly faster on trials with a long stimulus onset asynchrony. Practicing on both tasks led to fewer omissions for left-sided targets, minimally in the exogenous and clearly in the endogenous condition.

Conclusion

In line with prior neuroanatomical studies, our study shows that practicing an endogenous, but not an exogenous, visuospatial attention task leads to significant improvements in neglect patients, especially for invalid trials, suggesting that neglect treatments based on top-down strategies should be given more attention.

中文翻译：

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重复应用隐秘的转移注意力任务可改善单侧视觉空间注意力不集中的患者的内源性而非外源性注意力

背景

大多数被忽略的治疗研究都集中在自动重新定向程序上，假设自动程序存在缺陷。我们比较自动程序和受控程序，使用波斯纳秘密转移任务的内生性和外生性变体。

方法

在两个实验中，忽略患者和右半球不忽略患者在两天内进行了三段Posner隐性注意力转移任务（Posner Task）。在研究1中，我们使用了内源性线索，在研究2中，我们使用了外源性线索。

结果

在内源性任务中，被忽视的患者在第1天的第1到第2步之间获得有效的左侧提示，从而明显改善，随后表现出平稳状态。他们还显示了两天无效试验的逐步改善。在外源条件下，所有试验在长刺激开始异步的情况下，对试验的响应速度只会越来越快。对这两项任务进行练习可减少左侧目标的遗漏，在外部情况下最少，而在内部情况下则明显。

结论

与先前的神经解剖学研究相一致，我们的研究表明，进行内源性而非外源性的视觉空间注意任务可以使被忽视的患者显着改善，尤其是对于无效试验，这表明应该更多地采用基于自上而下的策略的忽视治疗注意力。