Task 7

Question 1

Blindsight is a dissociation between ______ and _____.

Answer 1

Phenomenal Consciousness ; Behavior

Question 2

What can cause Korsakoff’s Syndrome?

Answer 2

Alcohol Poisoning and Malnutrition

Question 3

What are the effects of Korsakoff’s?

Answer 3

Anterograde and retrograde amnesia. Distant episodic memories and classical conditioning remain intact.

Question 4

Unilateral Neglect can be partially explained as what?

Answer 4

A deficit of attention.

Question 5

Which house would neglect patients chose in the burning house task?

Answer 5

The not burning one. The emotional and salient cue of the fire still affects decision making but patients would confabulate their answer.

Question 6

What happens in Anton’s Syndrome?

Answer 6

Patients are physically blind but insist they aren’t and confabulate when bumping into things.

Question 7

What still works in Anton’s Syndrome Patients?

Answer 7

Eyes and Imagination

Question 8

What does blindsight logically demonstrate?

Answer 8

That Consciousness and Perception are distinct

Question 9

What does it mean when people say that blindsight patients have increased response criteria?

Answer 9

They are hesitant to admit they might see something

Question 10

Do blindsight patients have visual consciousness?

Answer 10

Yes - phenomenal

Question 11

According to Marzi, there is no kind of consciousness in blindsight patients. Why?

Answer 11

Because there is no input into the neurological consciousness pathways

Question 12

What is a dissociation criterion?

Answer 12

Subjects are applying or acquiring information about stimuli without being aware of this or the intention to do so

Question 13

How does one subjectively determine whether someone is experiencing dissociation?

Answer 13

when subjects claim to not be able to discriminate perceptual information

Question 14

How does one objectively determine whether someone is experiencing dissociation?

Answer 14

Determining experimentally whether or not perceptual information is discriminated above chance level

Question 15

How could blindsight be related to the ventral and dorsal streams of visual perception?

Answer 15

Milner & Goodale:
Blindsight could be the product of strong deficits in the ventral (recognition) pathway and slight deficits in the dorsal (action) pathway. The dorsal pathway according to this view has proprioceptive awareness.

Question 16

What are two research finding that questions whether the ventral visual stream is truly deficient?

Answer 16

• After being shown a word in the blind eye field, the participants chose words from a group in the intact visual field, that were the same or related.
• Illusory shapes like Kanizsa-triangles were only perceived when they were complete, even though one half was always in the blind field

Question 17

The study with Kanizsa squares in blindsight patients is not without criticism. What are some confounders?

Answer 17

• Marcel (1998) argues that kanizsa squares were only perceived when completed in the blind field, because recognition in the blind field can form a hypothesis about the shape, which is then confirmed by the seeing field.
• Memories of the visual illusions, could be why the illusions (Kanizsa squares) still work

Question 18

Why does Marcel argue for indirect research methods in the study of blindsight instead of forced-choice paradigms?

Answer 18

Forced-choice is subject to response biases

Question 19

What are the three main types of agnosia?

Answer 19

• Apperceptive Agnosia
• Associative Agnosia
• Dorsal Stimultagnosia

Question 20

What happens in apperceptive agnosia?

Answer 20

• Only features like brightness, color and movement are recognized.
• Cues aren’t grouped together into distinct objects

Question 21

What happens in associative agnosia?

Answer 21

Objects are perceived but not recognized or identified.

Question 22

What happens in dorsal stimultagnosia?

Answer 22

• Only one object at a time can be recognized.

- Seems to be connected to spatial attention

Question 23

Is blindsight a deficit of attention?

Answer 23

No

Question 24

How can blindsight be summarized in terms of perception and awareness?

Answer 24

Blindsight is a defect of both form and motion perception, correlated with a partial loss of phenomenal awareness.