'Part-whole' processing in unilateral brain-damaged patients: dysfunction of hierarchical organization.

Visuospatial processing in unilateral brain-damaged patients was investigated by aligning two elements along different axes of an equilateral triangle and asking subjects to report the direction the triangle appeared to point when first observed. Left brain-damaged patients were more affected by the alignment than right brain-damaged patients, with controls performing in between the two brain-damaged groups. The implications of these findings for hemispheric differentiation in visuospatial processing are discussed.