D. Corina et al., VISUAL LANGUAGE PROCESSING AND UNILATERAL NEGLECT - EVIDENCE FROM AMERICAN SIGN LANGUAGE, Cognitive neuropsychology, 13(3), 1996, pp. 321-356
This paper investigates the effects of neglect on visual language proc
essing from a unique perspective; we present a case study of a deaf us
er of American Sign Language who suffers from left visual field neglec
t. Surprisingly, the signer's ability to process visual linguistic sig
ns is not affected by neglect. In contrast, the processing of non-ling
uistic objects is severely impaired. This unique dissociation forces c
onsideration of interactions between attention, language structure, la
nguage recognition, and object representations. This study provides co
mpelling evidence for the interaction between linguistic knowledge and
cognitive mechanisms underlying visual attention. Implications for th
eories of attention and representation are discussed.