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Visual Agnosia

Visual Agnosia

Visual agnosia is a condition characterized by the inability to recognize visually presented objects despite having normal vision. For instance, a person with visual agnosia can describe the shape and color of an object but cannot identify or name it. This impairment does not affect their visual field, acuity, color vision, brightness discrimination, language, or memory. An example of this condition in a social setting is someone at a dinner party asking for "that silver thing with a round end"...

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Related Experiment Video

Updated: May 28, 2026

A Cognitive Paradigm to Investigate Interference in Working Memory by Distractions and Interruptions

A Cognitive Paradigm to Investigate Interference in Working Memory by Distractions and Interruptions

Published on: July 16, 2015

Visual mental image generation does not overlap with visual short-term memory: a dual-task interference study.

Gregoire Borst¹, Elaine Niven, Robert H Logie

¹University Paris Descartes, Sorbonne Paris Cité, 46 rue Saint Jacques, 75005 Paris, France. gregoire.borst@parisdescartes.fr

Memory & Cognition

|October 13, 2011

Summary

This summary is machine-generated.

Visual mental imagery and visual working memory share a common storage system for retention but not for generation. This finding clarifies the distinct roles of cognitive processes in visual memory.

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Last Updated: May 28, 2026

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Area of Science:

Cognitive Psychology
Neuroscience
Human Memory

Background:

Visual mental imagery and working memory are often presumed to involve overlapping cognitive processes.
However, the precise functional relationship between image generation, image retention, and visual information retention remains unclear.

Purpose of the Study:

To investigate whether the generation and short-term retention of visual mental images involve the same cognitive processes as the retention of visual information.
To differentiate the roles of visual short-term memory in image generation versus retention.

Main Methods:

Participants encoded and recalled letter sequences presented visually or aurally.
Two interference tasks were employed: spatial tapping (motor interference) and irrelevant visual input (IVI).
Experiments manipulated interference timing during encoding, retention, and generation phases.

Main Results:

Spatial tapping interfered with retention of visually presented letters and aurally presented letters when visual imagery was generated.
Irrelevant visual input disrupted the generation of mental images but not their subsequent retention.
Spatial tapping was more disruptive during the retention phase than during encoding.

Conclusions:

The findings suggest that the temporary retention of visual mental images and visual information relies on a shared visual short-term memory store.
Image generation, however, appears to involve distinct cognitive mechanisms not dependent on this visual short-term memory store.