Attentional deficits in patients with closed head injury: a further study to the discriminative validity of the test of everyday attention

Abstract

This study aimed to explore the attentional performance of patients with closed head injury (CHI) and to examine the discriminative validity of the Test of Everyday Attention (TEA) in this clinical population. A sample of 21 patients with CHI was recruited for this study. Another sample of matched controls was also recruited for comparison. In addition, other clinical tests of attention and questionnaires on everyday life cognitive failures were also given to the participants during the assessment session. The results showed that patients with CHI exhibited significant differences in most of the TEA subtests, as well as clinical tests of attention, as compared with the matched controls. These findings suggest that the majority of the TEA subtests are able to discriminate out those patients with attentional deficits from the normal population in terms of sustained attention, selective attention, divided attention, and attentional switching.