The use of computers in the rehabilitation of attention disorders

This chapter explores the use of computers within the context of the evolving discipline of cognitive rehabilitation. There has been relatively little emphasis on such approaches in the cognitive rehabilitation literature to date. At its foundation lies the assumption that disorders of attention, memory, concept formation and thought organization can be improved by remediation. There has been relatively little emphasis on such approaches in the cognitive rehabilitation literature to date. Computers have most commonly been applied to the remediation of cognitive deficits according to the non-directed and directed stimulation paradigms. There have been relatively few published studies examining the effects of computer-assisted cognitive retraining according to the non-directed or directed stimulation paradigms. Studies evaluating the impact on cognitive deficits of stimulation using computer-mediated tasks have shown mixed results. The majority of the studies failed to demonstrate objectively the impact of training on the everyday lives of the patients.