Table 1.

Schematic overview of how, according to the original version of FIT (Treisman and Gelade, 1980), dissociations between the processing of spatial and content (non-spatial) features of visual stimuli observed in some (emblematic) neuropsychological conditions may account for the loss of conscious perception of these stimuli.

Neuropsychological syndrome/symptom	Content features processing	Spatial features processing	Feature binding	Conscious perception
Disorders of visual gnosis limited to one specific content feature	All except one (e.g., color)
e.g., Achromatopsia	+	+	+	+
Cortical blindness
Blindsight	−	+	−	−
Balint's syndrome
Simultanagnosia	+	−	−	−
Illusory conjunctions	+	−	×	+
Unilateral neglect
Contralesional omissions	+	−	−	−
Allochiria	+	×	+	+

Following FIT, stimulus awareness, or the lack of it, observed in these conditions may be traced back to whether these features can be bound together to form integrated percepts (cf., e.g., Làdavas et al., 2000; Deouell, 2002; Robertson, 2003, 2004). See text for a description of recent findings (e.g., evidence of implicit content feature processing in blindsight patients) that question such a view. +, unimpaired (proper); −, impaired (absent); ×, impaired (improper).