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Visual Agnosia

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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...

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Related Experiment Video

Updated: Jul 24, 2025

Measuring Attentional Biases for Threat in Children and Adults

Measuring Attentional Biases for Threat in Children and Adults

Published on: October 19, 2014

The Agent Preference in Visual Event Apprehension.

Arrate Isasi-Isasmendi^1,2, Caroline Andrews^1,2, Monique Flecken³

¹Department of Comparative Language Science, University of Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland.

Open Mind : Discoveries in Cognitive Science

|July 7, 2023

Summary

This summary is machine-generated.

Humans naturally prioritize agents ("doers") over patients ("undergoers") when processing events, even at the earliest stages of event apprehension. This agent preference is influenced by language and task demands.

Keywords:

Basque Spanish agents brief exposure paradigm case marking event apprehension event roles eye tracking patients

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Area of Science:

Cognitive Science
Psycholinguistics
Linguistics

Background:

Human communication relies on understanding events via agent and patient roles.
Agents are generally more salient and preferred over patients in cognition and language.
It remains unclear if agent preference operates during initial event apprehension and its modifiability.

Purpose of the Study:

To investigate if agent preference occurs during the earliest stage of event processing (apprehension).
To examine how language (Basque vs. Spanish) and task demands affect agent preference during event apprehension.
To determine if agent preference is modulated by linguistic and task factors.

Main Methods:

Two brief exposure experiments (300 ms) with native Basque and Spanish speakers.
Participants described images or answered probe questions about them.
Eye fixations and behavioral data were analyzed using Bayesian regression to compare event role extraction.

Main Results:

Agents consistently received more attention and were recognized better than patients across both languages and tasks.
Linguistic differences (ergative case marking in Basque) and task demands influenced attention to agents.
A general preference for agents was observed during event apprehension.

Conclusions:

A universal preference for agents exists during the initial apprehension of events.
This agent preference is not absolute and can be modulated by language-specific encoding and task requirements.
Findings highlight the interplay between cognitive biases and linguistic/task influences in early event perception.