title: Eye movements during object recognition in visual agnosia.
abstract: This paper reports the first ever detailed study about eye movement patterns during single object recognition in visual agnosia. Eye movements were recorded in a patient with an integrative agnosic deficit during two recognition tasks: common object naming and novel object recognition memory. The patient showed normal directional biases in saccades and fixation dwell times in both tasks and was as likely as controls to fixate within object bounding contour regardless of recognition accuracy. In contrast, following initial saccades of similar amplitude to controls, the patient showed a bias for short saccades. In object naming, but not in recognition memory, the similarity of the spatial distributions of patient and control fixations was modulated by recognition accuracy. The study provides new evidence about how eye movements can be used to elucidate the functional impairments underlying object recognition deficits. We argue that the results reflect a breakdown in normal functional processes involved in the integration of shape information across object structure during the visual perception of shape.
authors.affiliation: Wales Institute for Cognitive Neuroscience, School of Psychology, Bangor University, Bangor Gwynedd LL57 2AS, UK. e.c.leek@bangor.ac.uk
authors.forename: E
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Charles Leek
authors.forename: Candy
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Patterson
authors.forename: Matthew A
authors.initials: MA
authors.lastname: Paul
authors.forename: Robert
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Rafal
authors.forename: Filipe
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Cristino
mesh_terms: D000368:Aged; D000377:Agnosia / Q000503:physiopathology* / Q000523:psychology*; D005133:Eye Movements / Q000502:physiology*; D005145:Face; D005260:Female; D005403:Fixation, Ocular / Q000502:physiology; D006801:Humans; D007091:Image Processing, Computer-Assisted; D007361:Intelligence Tests; D007807:Language Tests; D008279:Magnetic Resonance Imaging; D008297:Male; D009483:Neuropsychological Tests; D010775:Photic Stimulation; D020238:Prosopagnosia / Q000150:complications / Q000523:psychology; D011597:Psychomotor Performance / Q000502:physiology; D011932:Reading; D021641:Recognition, Psychology / Q000502:physiology*; D012438:Saccades / Q000502:physiology; D012660:Semantics; D020521:Stroke / Q000150:complications / Q000523:psychology; D014796:Visual Perception / Q000502:physiology*