Damage to the frontal lobes, temporal lobes and other areas throughout the brain can impair attention skills. The ability to pay attention is important for successful communication. Difficulties sustaining attention, high levels of distractibility and the inability to divide attention between more than one task (e.g. talking whilst making a cup of tea) can have a significant impact on communication. The person with attentional deficits may:
- Have decreased ability to understand spoken or written language.
- Have impaired ability to form new memories. A decrease in
attention affects the person’s ability to register information communicated to them and transfer information into their memory store. Attention is the first stage in the process of remembering. The person may forget or ‘misremember’ information communicated to them. - Lose track of what they are trying to communicate, thus affecting the success of their communication.
- Struggle to stay on topic, speech content may be tangential, the person may suddenly change the topic of conversation.
- Have a decreased ability to follow conversation.
- Be noticeably distractible.
- Appear ‘bored’ when other people are communicating with them and have reduced ability to tolerate communication, assessment and rehabilitation.
- Have decreased ability to follow T.V. or film storylines, read books.
- Be unable to maintain appropriate non-verbal and social communication.
For further information about attention, please refer to the relevant section of this website.