Hemispheric and attentional contributions to perceptual organization deficits on the global-local task in schizophrenia

Right and left hemisphere hypotheses have been proposed to account for cognitive deficits in schizophrenia. To examine these hypotheses, perception of global-local patterns was studied in 22 patients with schizophrenia and 28 normal comparison participants. The patients with schizophrenia showed an abnormally exaggerated global processing advantage when attention was divided between global and local levels but not when participants were instructed to attend to either the local or global level. This finding suggested a local processing (left hemisphere) deficit, which was overcome through strategic attentional allocation (instructional set). When the stimulus visual angle was reduced from 9 degrees to 3 degrees, the normal participants showed a shift from a local to a global processing advantage, but the patients did not. This finding suggested a more subtle deficit in strategic attentional processes that develop through exposure to stimulus context.