Attention
Attention is the foundation of all cognition -If a person has difficulties with attention it is likely that other aspects of their cognition could be affected, If a person is unable to attend to a task or some information, they will not be able to get the information into the brain to process it and therefore will not be able to remember it or use that information to problem solve.
It is important to consider if a person is struggling with everyday tasks such as reading a book, cooking a meal or being in a group setting it may be due to a difficulty with attention.
There are different types/levels to attention:
- Sustained attention – commonly known as concentration. The ability to focus on one task for a sustained period of time
- Selective attention – the ability to choose what you want to focus your attention on and ignore other stimuli
- Alternating attention – the ability to alternate your attention from one stimuli to another with ease and speed
- Divided attention – commonly known as multi-tasking. The ability to divide attention between two or more stimuli.
Ways to support someone with attention difficulties:
- Educate and explain -help the person and their families/carers to understand that attentional difficulties can be an effect of the stroke
- Remove distractions – find a quiet environment with no or little distractions
- Give time -be patient, it might take longer for someone to move their attention between tasks
- Repeat the information if someone has lost focus
- Ask the person if they were able to take in what you said
- Minimise instructions – think of how long a person can maintain their concentration for and try and keep any information given within that time frame
- Help a person to break a task down into simple steps that they can do one at a time
- Encourage a person to take breaks if they are losing concentration
- Use technology such as recording a TV programme to allow a person to rewind back if they have lost focus or become distracted.
- Slowly increase the time that someone focuses on one task such as reading, playing a game of cards or a computer game.
- Slowly start to introduce some distractions such as playing a radio when a person is reading or having a conversation.
- Refer to an Occupational Therapist or Neuropsychologist for a cognitive assessment and for cognitive rehabilitation.
Visit the newly revised STARs Advancing Module 6 where Michaels’ recovery process is be discussed in more detail as he prepares to return to work.
Page last reviewed: 15 Jul 2022
