IMPAIRMENTS OF ATTENTION IN INDIVIDUALS WITH MULTIPLE-SCLEROSIS

To investigate the status of attention in multiple sclerosis (MS) we a dministered tests of focused and divided attention to 39 MS patients a nd 18 age- and education-matched control subjects. In addition, a test of vigilance and a test of automatic information processing was admin istered. MS patients performed as well as controls on the automatic pr ocessing task and on most measures of focused and divided attention wh en accuracy but not speed was the dependent variable. By contrast the MS patients Performed significantly, worse than controls on the more e ffortful measures of attention, especially those that engaged working memory or emphasized speeded responding These results indicate that de ficits of attention in MS patients are most likely to be evident on ta sks which require concentrated cognitive effort.