Attention and Neurological Disorders

Abstract

``Pay attention!'' says the teacher to a daydreaming student. ``Are you paying attention?'' asks the wife who's reviewing the weekend plans with her seemingly distracted husband. ``Atten-shun!'' shouts the lieutenant to his troops. ``I wasn't paying attention,'' explains the motorist who backed into a fence. These examples serve to highlight the practical, everyday importance of attention. It is an often-mentioned human behavior because we all seem to appreciate that processing of any form of environmental information requires us to attend to that information. Most ``accidents'' are caused by failures or decrements of attention. This fact is now well-documented by studies of motorists using cellular telephones. Furthermore, attention is basic to all learning. As attention for new, incoming stimuli decreases, learning decreases. Clinicians recognize that all forms of therapy involve some form of learning. If the individual receiving treatment is not relegating the amount and type of attention required by a task, then incomplete, incorrect, or even no learning takes place. We also recognize that tests of other domains of cognition, such as language and executive skills can yield invalid assessments of those skills secondary to attentional deficits.