SUSTAINED ATTENTION AFTER SEVERE CLOSED-HEAD INJURY

Sustained attention was assessed in 20 patients with severe closed hea d injury (CHI) and 20 normal matched controls. Participants were prese nted with a visual continuous performance task (CPT) with 3 levels of complexity. Performance was assessed by examining response latencies a nd error rates. Across all levels of complexity, the CHI patients demo nstrated a vigilance decrement, whereas the performance of the matched controls was stable across time. The vigilance decrement was not diff erentially affected by the manipulation of task complexity in the CHI patients. However, findings suggest that the overall vigilance perform ance of CHI patients was differentially affected by increasing the com plexity of the task.