TY - JOUR
T1 - The effect of stimulus features on working memory of categorical and coordinate spatial relations in patients with unilateral brain damage
AU - van der Ham, Ineke J.M.
AU - van Wezel, Richard Jack Anton
AU - Oleksiak, Anna
AU - van Zandvoort, Martine J.M.
AU - Frijns, Catharina J.M.
AU - Kapelle, L. Jaap
AU - Postma, Albert
N1 - eemcs-eprint-21830
PY - 2012
Y1 - 2012
N2 - Spatial relations are typically divided into categorical and coordinate spatial relations. Categorical relations are abstract and show a left hemisphere (LH) advantage, whereas coordinate relations are metric and related to a right hemisphere (RH) advantage. In the current study a working memory task was used to asses categorical and coordinate performance with two different stimulus sets. In this task, participants had to compare two sequentially presented stimuli, consisting of a dot and a cross. The cross size used in the stimuli was either large or small; a direct manipulation of the amount of information provided to determine a category, or to assess a distance. Patients with damage in the LH or the RH and highly comparable controls were tested. In control participants, categorical processing is faster with the use of a large cross, i.e., more visual information about category boundaries. In contrast, coordinate performance was more accurate with a small cross, i.e., presenting less unnecessary visual information. LH patients showed a specific defect in processing categorical stimuli with a small cross and coordinate stimuli with a large cross. The RH patients were impaired in all conditions except for the categorical small cross condition. We conclude that a larger amount of nformation present in stimuli increases categorical processing performance and decreases coordinate processing performance, while opposite effects are found for less stimulus information.
AB - Spatial relations are typically divided into categorical and coordinate spatial relations. Categorical relations are abstract and show a left hemisphere (LH) advantage, whereas coordinate relations are metric and related to a right hemisphere (RH) advantage. In the current study a working memory task was used to asses categorical and coordinate performance with two different stimulus sets. In this task, participants had to compare two sequentially presented stimuli, consisting of a dot and a cross. The cross size used in the stimuli was either large or small; a direct manipulation of the amount of information provided to determine a category, or to assess a distance. Patients with damage in the LH or the RH and highly comparable controls were tested. In control participants, categorical processing is faster with the use of a large cross, i.e., more visual information about category boundaries. In contrast, coordinate performance was more accurate with a small cross, i.e., presenting less unnecessary visual information. LH patients showed a specific defect in processing categorical stimuli with a small cross and coordinate stimuli with a large cross. The RH patients were impaired in all conditions except for the categorical small cross condition. We conclude that a larger amount of nformation present in stimuli increases categorical processing performance and decreases coordinate processing performance, while opposite effects are found for less stimulus information.
KW - BSS-Neurotechnology and cellular engineering
KW - EWI-21830
KW - relations
KW - Working memory
KW - IR-80315
KW - Lateralization
KW - Stimulus features
KW - METIS-293163
KW - Categorical and coordinate spatial
KW - Unilateral brain damage
U2 - 10.1016/j.cortex.2011.03.002
DO - 10.1016/j.cortex.2011.03.002
M3 - Article
VL - 48
SP - 737
EP - 745
JO - Cortex
JF - Cortex
SN - 0010-9452
IS - 6
ER -