Difficulty matters: Unspecific attentional demands as a major determinant of performance highlighted by clinical studies

Abstract

The cognitive impairments shown by brain-damaged patients emphasize the role of task difficulty as a major determinant for performance. We discuss the proposal of Kurzban et al. in light of our findings on right-hemisphere-damaged patients, who show increasing awareness deficits for the contralesional hemispace when engaged with resource-consuming dual tasks. This phenomenon is readily explained by the assumption of unspecific depletable resources.