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Visual selective attention among persons with schizophrenia: the distractor ratio effect
Ava Elahipanah1, Bruce K Christensen, Eyal M Reingold
1Centre for Addiction and Mental Health, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
Schizophrenia Research
|June 27, 2008
Summary
Patients with schizophrenia demonstrate normal visual search selectivity. Their ability to organize visual information and focus attention on relevant stimuli is intact, contrary to previous assumptions about impaired visual attention in this population.
Area of Science:
- Cognitive Neuroscience
- Psychiatry
Background:
- Visual attention deficits are common in schizophrenia.
- Previous research suggested impaired perceptual organization and search selectivity contribute to these deficits.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate if visual attention impairments in schizophrenia stem from poor perceptual organization and search selectivity.
- To examine how patients with schizophrenia perform on a visual search task with manipulated distractor frequencies.
Main Methods:
- A conjunctive visual search task was administered to 23 patients with schizophrenia and 22 healthy controls.
- The relative frequency of two distractor types was manipulated within the visual search displays.
- Response times were measured to assess search efficiency and selectivity.
Main Results:
- Patients with schizophrenia modulated their response times normally based on distractor ratios.
- Schizophrenia patients demonstrated the ability to benefit from a smaller subset of distractors.
- This indicates effective grouping of items by perceptual similarity and flexible attention deployment.
Conclusions:
- Search selectivity, as influenced by distractor frequency, is unimpaired in patients with schizophrenia.
- The findings challenge the notion that poor perceptual organization underlies visual attention deficits in schizophrenia.
- Patients with schizophrenia can effectively group visual information and selectively attend to relevant stimuli.
