Attention deficits in aphasia: presence, nature, assessment, and treatment

Recently, there has been growing interest in understanding how nonlinguistic cognitive problems such as impaired attention might negatively affect the linguistic abilities of adults with aphasia. This article begins with a summary of research focused on the relationship between attention and language impairments in aphasia and a discussion of why it might be important for clinicians to address the attention abilities of their aphasic patients. Also discussed are formal and informal measures for quantifying and qualifying attention problems, treatment strategies for directly or indirectly remediating attention problems in patients with aphasia, and empirical support for such treatment.