Effect of lateralized kinetic visual cues on visual search in patients with unilateral spatial neglect.

Patients with left neglect following right cerebral infarcts and normal control subjects searched for a single target letter among distractor letters presented on a display screen while kinetic visual cues were continuously presented on the left side or the center of the display screen. Kinetic visual cues presented on the left side enhanced patients' detection of left-sided targets but did not reduce the time that they required to search for left-sided targets. In contrast, the same cues did not alter the patients' detection or rate of search for left-sided targets when they were presented in the center of the display screen. Analysis of these and previous results suggest that kinetic visual cues may be more suitable than other forms of cueing for rehabilitation of neglect and may be particularly effective with neglect patients whose attention is strongly biased to the unneglected side.