Material-specific and non-specific attention deficits in children and adolescents following temporal-lobe surgery

Attentional control in children and adolescents with unilateral temporal-lobe excisions was examined using two experimental tasks, a lexical-decision and a spatial-cue task, and a standardized vigilance task. Participants with left temporal excisions took longer than controls to reorient their attention after invalid cues compared to neutral cues in the lexical task and they made more errors on all three of the tasks. Participants with right temporal excisions differed from controls in the number of errors made on the spatial task. No differences were found between the lesion and control groups on reaction-time measures of the spatial task. The results suggest that a material-specific inhibition impairment, as well as a more general sustained attention deficit, may result after a left temporal excision in childhood or adolescence. These deficits are considered in the context of neuroanatomical models of attentional control.