ABSTRACT
Experimental evidence for the separability of identity and location information In Chapter 2, we reviewed studies that showed that the colour, identity and location of objects can dissociate and in Chapter 3, we have seen that there is conflicting evidence on the level of processing achieved by object attributes prior to selection. Numerous studies demonstrate that early in the lifetime of a brief visual display colour, identity and location are available, but are not stabilised together to allow accurate report. Sometimes identity or categorised information can influence selection, sometimes not. Participants make frequent mislocation errors, incorrectly reporting a letter adjacent to the target, apparently knowing “what” the letter was, but not exactly “where” it was. The interference effects that occur appear to differ according to task demands and provide conflicting evidence on what information combined prior to selection. We have also noted in the previous chapter that in Balint’s patients there is a problem in making the properties of objects concurrently available for the control of behaviour. Here, we shall introduce more evidence for separate codes in the brain and then consider how all this information might be recombined into integrated objects to allow selective report and control actions.
