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Visual Search and Attention Test

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Encyclopedia of Clinical Neuropsychology

Definition

The Visual Search and Attention Test (VSAT) is a test of attention that assesses potential visual field defects, unilateral spatial neglect, and syndromes that affect perception in portions of the visual field. The VSAT employs a cancelation task paradigm, in which participants must detect a relevant target stimulus among other irrelevant stimuli (distractors) and cross out the target. The VSAT is comprised of four different cancelation tasks. Each task is presented on an 11″ × 8.5″ page, on which the relevant target stimulus (e.g., a letter or a symbol) is centrally located at the top of the page. If the relevant target stimulus is a letter, the irrelevant stimuli will all be letters, and if the target is a symbol, the irrelevant stimuli will all be symbols. Ten rows with 40 letters or symbols are presented per row, below the target. Each row contains ten relevant target stimuli randomly distributed among 30 irrelevant stimuli. All four cancelation tasks are timed with an...

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Correspondence to Natalie C. Ebner .

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Ebner, N.C., Frazier, I., Ellis, D. (2016). Visual Search and Attention Test. In: Kreutzer, J., DeLuca, J., Caplan, B. (eds) Encyclopedia of Clinical Neuropsychology. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-56782-2_9094-1

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