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Part of the book series: Critical Issues in Neuropsychology ((CINP))

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Abstract

Attention may be defined as the capacity to perform a selective analysis of inputs (Glass & Holyoak, 1986). Several aspects of attention may be distinguished: Focused attention is the ability to focus on a task or a part of the environment and to ignore distracters (Van Zomeren & Brouwer, 1987). Sustained attention or vigilance is the capacity to sustain the focus for a significant period of time (Van Zomeren & Brouwer, 1987). Divided attention is the capacity to divide or share attention between different tasks or different parts of the environment (Van Zomeren & Brouwer, 1987). The ability to divide attention is closely related to information-processing capacity. Cognitive flexibility is the ability to shift attention appropriately and adaptively from one part of the environment to another.

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© 1994 Springer Science+Business Media New York

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Anderson, R.M. (1994). Attention. In: Practitioner’s Guide to Clinical Neuropsychology. Critical Issues in Neuropsychology. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4615-2480-9_16

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4615-2480-9_16

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Boston, MA

  • Print ISBN: 978-0-306-44616-0

  • Online ISBN: 978-1-4615-2480-9

  • eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive

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