Attention

Question 1

What are the four types of attention

Answer 1

sustained, selective, alternating, divided

Question 2

What’s the important precursor for attention

Answer 2

Arousal and alertness (limbic)
Passive attention- orienting response, startle response
Focused attention- discrete response to specific stimuli

Question 3

What portion of the brain is responsible for alertness and attention?

Answer 3

Primary: Reticular activating system
Secondary: Some frontal and limbic

Question 4

What is sustained attention?

Answer 4

1. Vigilance. Ability to continuously attend to input so that information can be processed.
2. Ability to maintain consistent behavioral response during continuous or repetetive activities

Question 5

What are the neural substrates of sustained attention

Answer 5

1. Reticular activating system in brainstem.
2. Right frontal and parietal cortical regions
3. Production and regulation of ACETYLCHOLIN

Question 6

How do we assess vigilance and sustained attention?

Answer 6

Vigilance decrement,
Increased arousal (can be correlated with increased vigilance and vice versa)
monitoring whether auditory or visual task(some people are better at one vs other)

Question 7

What is a sample sustained attention task?

Answer 7

Continuous performance Test= identify x every time it appears in random string of letters.

Question 8

What is vigilance decrement

Answer 8

increase in errors or reaction times over course of task

Question 9

What is selective attention

Answer 9

Freedom from external and internal distractions, filtering. This increases processing of one item over another. Can apply to any modality.

Question 10

What are the Neural substrates of selective attention

Answer 10

anterior cingulate, pulvinar nucleus of thalamus, right parietal (damage here=visual neglect)

Question 11

What test can be given to assess selective attention

Answer 11

Stroop test (say the word, not the color the word is in)
Informal assessment/interview
elevator counting with distraction= count low tones in pretend elevator while ignoring high tones. (auditory selective attention)

Question 12

Alternating attention

Answer 12

moving between two selective attention task.

Need mental flexibility

Question 13

What are the Neural substrates of selctive attetnion

Answer 13

anterior cingulate, pulvinar nucleus of thalamus

Question 14

What’s a test of alternating attention

Answer 14

Test of everyday attention (Robertson et al, 1996). Visual elevator.
Must count up and down as follow serious of visually presented doors. It’s measure of cognitive flexibility.

Question 15

What’s divided attention

Answer 15

attend to mor ethan one stimulus at a time or more than one aspect of the same stimulus.
Continuous rapid alternating attention.
One task might be more “automatic”

Question 16

What is divided attention closely related to?

Answer 16

Working memory. Need to maintain information to manipulate it.

Question 17

What is the cognitive cost associated with divided attention?

Answer 17

Neither task can receive 100% of cognitive resources/energy.

Question 18

What did azouvi et al 2004 find?

Answer 18

2 tasks.
Random number generation and Go-No Go task.
Reaction time increased from single to dual task, but the difference was greater for TBI group.

Question 19

What are the Options for treating attention

Answer 19

Pharmacological, environmental, modifying daily routines, Impairment based drills

Question 20

What is enviromental option for treating attention?

Answer 20

arranging visual environment, reducing extraneous noise

Question 21

What daily routine alterations can be made to help attention deficits.

Answer 21

Reducing need to multitask, use of verbalization or other self-cues when changing tasks, setting limits to avoid vigilance decrement

Question 22

What is issue with impairment based drills?

Answer 22

Don’t generalize