Focused and divided attention abilities in the acute phase of recovery from moderate to severe traumatic brain injury

ABSTRACT

Primary objective: Impairments in attention following traumatic brain injury (TBI) can significantly impact recovery and rehabilitation effectiveness. This study investigated the multi-faceted construct of selective attention following TBI, highlighting the differences on visual nonsearch (focused attention) and search (divided attention) tasks. Methods and procedures: Participants were 30 individuals with moderate to severe TBI who were tested acutely (i.e. following emergence from PTA) and 30 age- and education-matched controls. Participants were presented with visual displays that contained either two or eight items. In the focused attention, nonsearch condition, the location of the target (if present) was cued with a peripheral arrow prior to presentation of the visual displays. In the divided attention, search condition, no spatial cue was provided prior to presentation of the visual displays. Main outcomes and results: The results revealed intact focused, nonsearch, attention abilities in the acute phase of TBI recovery. In contrast, when no spatial cue was provided (divided attention condition), participants with TBI demonstrated slower visual search compared to the control group. Conclusions: The results of this study suggest that capitalizing on intact focused attention abilities by allocating attention during cognitively demanding tasks may help to reduce mental workload and improve rehabilitation effectiveness.

KEYWORDS:

• Visual search
• visual nonsearch
• selective attention
• closed head injury
• deficits

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank Randi McDonald, Shital Pavawalla, Jonathan Anderson, Jennifer McWilliams, Michelle Nuegen, Matthew Wright and Ellen Woo for their support in coordinating data collection. The authors would also like to thank the TBI participants and the members of the Head Injury Research Team for their help in collecting and scoring the data.

Declaration of interest

The authors report no declarations of interest. This study was supported by the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke under grant #R01 NS47690.