Problems inhibiting attentional capture by irrelevant stimuli in patients with frontotemporal dementia.
We studied the role of the frontal lobes in orienting spatial attention and inhibiting attentional capture by goal-irrelevant stimuli, using a spatial cueing method in patients with frontotemporal dementia (FTD). Two blocks of trials were presented, one with non-predictive cues and the other with counter-predictive cues. FTD patients showed a global orienting deficit, with a greater difference between invalid and valid trials than age-matched controls. However, they were able to use the (counter-) predictiveness of the cue to reduce the invalid/valid difference when targets occurred most often in the location opposite the cue. Thus, endogenous control of attention in our FTD patients was sufficient to reorient attention on the basis of the probability of events, but not to resist the capture of attention by goal-irrelevant stimuli. These results confirm the role of frontal lobes in the inhibition of attentional capture.
Piquard
Ambre
A
Laboratoire de Psychologie et Neurosciences Cognitives (CNRS UMR 8189), Université Paris Descartes, Centre Henri Piéron, 71 Avenue Edouard-Vaillant, 92100 Boulogne-Billancourt, France.
Lacomblez
Lucette
L
Derouesné
Christian
C
Siéroff
Eric
E
D000368:Aged; D000704:Analysis of Variance; D001288:Attention; D003463:Cues; D003704:Dementia / Q000523:psychology*; D006801:Humans; D008875:Middle Aged; D010775:Photic Stimulation; D011336:Probability; D011597:Psychomotor Performance; D011930:Reaction Time