VISUAL SELECTIVE ATTENTION DEFICITS IN PATIENTS WITH PARKINSONS-DISEASE - A QUANTITATIVE MODEL-BASED APPROACH

Seventeen Parkinson's disease (PD) patients with no dementia and a gro up of matched normal controls were administered a visual attention tas k. A set of quantitative models were developed and applied to the data (W.T. Maddox & F.G. Ashby, 1993). These models provided a description of the nature of individual error distributions. The results suggeste d that (a) PD patients were not differentially impaired as compared wi th normal controls in their ability to integrate information from 2 st imulus dimensions; (b) a significantly larger proportion of the PD pat ients as compared with normal controls showed deficits in selective at tention; and (c) although a large subgroup of the PD patients showed s elective attention deficits, another subgroup of PD patients was able to attend selectively in an optimal fashion. The possible neuropatholo gical correlates of PD patients' selective attention deficits are disc ussed.