EVALUATION IN THERAPEUTIC CONTEXTS - ATTENTIONAL AND NEGLECT DISORDERS

Recent experimental and neuropsychological theorizing suggest that att ention may be divided into separable domains. These are organized alon g the dimensions intensity and selectivity, comprising the attention d omains of alertness, sustained attention, selective or focused attenti on, and divided attention. There is strong evidence that differently l ocalized brain damage leads to specific impairments within these atten tion domains. Efficacy studies on retraining methods after attention i mpairments show that the intensity aspects of attention in particular have to be trained in a highly specific way so as not to risk further impairment. In this paper, a taxonomy of attention domains and apperta ining tasks is presented. These tasks serve as instruments to assess s pecific attention impairments in the individual patient, to help the n europsychologist plan therapeutic measures, and to evaluate their effi cacy.