Attentional deficits in patients with closed head injury: a further study to the discriminative validity of the test of everyday attention

This study aimed to explore the attentional performance of patients with do sed head injury (CHI) and to examine the discriminative validity of the Tes t of Everyday Attention (TEA) in this clinical population. A sample of 21 p atients with CHI was recruited for this study. Another sample of matched co ntrols was also recruited for comparison. In addition, other clinical tests of attention and questionnaires on everyday life cognitive failures were a lso given to the participants during the assessment session. The results sh owed that patients with CHI exhibited significant differences in most of th e TEA subtests, as well as clinical tests of attention, as compared with th e matched controls. These findings suggest that the majority of the TEA sub tests are able to discriminate out those patients with attentional deficits from the normal population in terms of sustained attention, selective atte ntion, divided attention, and attentional switching.