Focused and divided attention abilities in the acute phase of recovery from moderate to severe traumatic brain injury.
Kayela Robertson, Maureen Schmitter-Edgecombe
PMID 28481625WHAT IT FOUND
People with moderate-to-severe TBI in acute recovery struggle to search visually when distracted, but can filter out irrelevant info if first given a spatial cue.
They are also slower to confirm when a target is absent. Use location cues and allow extra time.
Key findings
01Participants with TBI showed impaired divided attention, with search rates increasing more sharply with distractor load compared to controls.
02Focused attention was intact; TBI and control groups did not differ in their ability to use spatial cues to ignore distractors.
03Participants with TBI took longer to respond to target-absent trials than target-present trials, even when attention was cued.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for PTsWhat it means for OTsWhat it means for SLPs
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What it does not show
The sample was small (n=30 per group) and primarily Caucasian, limiting generalizability. Participants had moderate-to-severe TBI, mostly from motor vehicle accidents with frontal or diffuse axonal injury; results may not apply to mild TBI or different injury mechanisms. The study used simple, highly discriminable visual targets in a controlled computer environment, which may not reflect complex real-world visual search demands. Reaction time differences were analyzed, but the study did not measure functional outcomes in daily life.
Declared interests
No conflicts of interest or funding sources are explicitly detailed in the provided text, though the study was part of a larger project.
The easy way to misread this
Do not assume that because focused attention is intact, the patient can handle any visual task. The study shows that without an initial spatial cue, the patient's attention is easily overloaded by distractors, and they are significantly slower at confirming when an item is absent.