This subproject is one of many research subprojects utilizing the resources provided by a Center grant funded by NIH/NCRR. The subproject and investigator (PI) may have received primary funding from another NIH source, and thus could be represented in other CRISP entries. The institution listed is for the Center, which is not necessarily the institution for the investigator. We plan to assess impairments in the operation of attention within perceptual systems in schizophrenia (SC). The available SC literature examining perceptual systems, while provocative, has not generally used optimal methods to isolate this type of attention. To accomplish this, we will use spatial cuing and visual search tasks that are specifically designed to stress perceptual systems and that have been shown to involve perceptual-level allocation of attention. We will use a spatial cuing paradigm to determine whether attention influences sensory detection thresholds normally in SC patients and whether previously reported perceptual organization deficits in these patients are accompanied by deficits in object-oriented attention. We will determine whether the patients have perceptual-level attentional deficits that lead to impaired performance in a visual search task that is designed to stress perceptual systems.
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