This thesis explores the visual functions of the right anterior temporal cortex of the human brain. In Part 1, 92 patients with unilateral temporal- or frontal-lobe excisions and 35 normal control subjects were tested under two experimental conditions (global, local) of a reaction-time task, employing hierarchically structured letters or designs as stimuli. In both versions, the right temporal-lobe group was less affected than other groups by interference from the global aspect of the stimulus. These findings support the hypothesis that the right temporal lobe contributes to global visual processing. In Part 2, the ability to learn a cue-system for discriminating between two targets against a background of visually similar items was examined in 107 patients with unilateral temporal- or frontal-lobe excisions and 37 control subjects, using three versions of a visual-cue learning task. With letters and nonsense syllables, all groups took longer to complete the task when the background information was changed after three learning trials. With abstract designs, only patients with right temporal-lobe lesions failed to show this interference effect after three learning trials, but did so after six. Hence, it is argued that the right temporal lobe plays a role in visual pattern-discrimination learning.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:LACETR/oai:collectionscanada.gc.ca:QMM.75696 |
| Date | January 1988 |
| Creators | Doyon, Julien |
| Publisher | McGill University |
| Source Sets | Library and Archives Canada ETDs Repository / Centre d'archives des thèses électroniques de Bibliothèque et Archives Canada |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Coverage | Doctor of Philosophy (Department of Psychology.) |
| Rights | All items in eScholarship@McGill are protected by copyright with all rights reserved unless otherwise indicated. |
| Relation | alephsysno: 000660153, proquestno: AAINL46057, Theses scanned by UMI/ProQuest. |
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