Attention is a cognitive process that helps us decide what we need to concentrate on and supports us to maintain concentration for as long 
as required. It helps us learn new information, remember things, communicate, socialise, work, look after family, follow instructions, read a book, cross a road, do the shopping, drive a car, plan a meal, organise finances and carry any other everyday life activities. Everything we do requires some degree of attention. Impairment of attention can have a serious effect on the ability to carry out everyday tasks and can also impact upon health and wellbeing.
Acquired Brain Injury can lead to impairments of attention, the severity of which range from the mild and barely noticeable to the severe and significantly life changing.
Attentional skills are an essential foundation to support other cognitive abilities. The ability to pay attention is necessary for memory and learning, information processing, executive functioning and communication.
Executive functioning and attention are interdependent on each other; executive functioning plays an important role in the process of attention. It is the executive system that prioritises and decides what it is important to attend to, for how long, what else we may need to attend to at the same time and when to shift attention to another task.
Executive functioning abilities also direct the motivation to pay attention. Reduced motivation arising from impaired executive functioning will have a significant impact on attentional abilities.
The process of attention can be subdivided into different types of attention:
Visual, Auditory and Tactile Attention
Focussed and Selective Attention
Sustained Attention
Alternating Attention and Divided Attention
Impairments of attention after brain injury may result in feelings of overwhelm, anxiety and low mood and particularly if too many demands are placed on the person, they are expected to process a lot 
of information quickly, or the environment is busy, noisy and/or confusing. This can cause difficulties for the person:
- They may struggle to make sense of their situation and engage with care. They may be perceived as uncooperative.
- They may get upset by not understanding what is going wrong, why they are not managing tasks and by feeling they do not know what is expected of them.
- They may withdraw from social activities.
- Challenging behaviour may occur.