Traumatic injury is the leading cause of death and hospitalization in the United States. It is the leading cause of death for people aged 1 to 44 years, including the leading cause of death for children. Each year nearly 25% of Americans sustain an injury requiring medical attention. In 1999, there were 97,860 deaths from traumatic injury. In 2000 there were 2,466,000 hospital discharges and ov...

The aim of this study was to further refine the cognitive phenotype of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), with respect to the ability to sustain attention and executive functioning. Participants were 34 boys with ADHD (combined type) and 28 normal controls. The groups were closely matched for age and IQ. All participants were 12 years of age. Both groups performed a computerized s...

Previous research has demonstrated that basic visual processing is enhanced when stimuli are presented near the hands. It has also been suggested that this preference for processing stimuli presented hand-proximal extends to higher-order cognitive processes, such as executive control (i.e., greater control for hand-proximal stimuli). Executive control, however, is associated with a number of di...

OBJECTIVE Children described as having attention deficit hyperactivity disorder often demonstrate inability to sustain visual attention during classroom fine motor activities. This study investigated the effect of wearing a weighted vest (deep-pressure sensory input) on children's on-task behavior in the classroom. METHOD Four students with documented attention difficulties and hyperactivity ...

Almost one-fifth of children who sustain a traumatic brain injury (TBI) are under the risk of attention problems after injury. The efficacy and tolerability of methylphenidate (MPH) in children with a history of TBI have not been completely identified. In this case report, MPH-induced manic symptoms in an adolescent with TBI will be summarized. A male patient aged 17 years was admitted with the...

The schizophrenic experience is described as an inability to sustain an intentional focus to attention. Attention is captured by incidental details in the schizophrenic patient's environment, and this gives rise to a spurious sense of significance. The patient's inability to direct a train of thought prevents full access to long-term memory so that early components of perception, which are desi...

Attention is a core property of all perceptual and cognitive operations. Given limited capacity to process competing options, attentional mechanisms select, modulate, and sustain focus on information most relevant for behavior. A significant problem, however, is that attention is so ubiquitous that it is unwieldy to study. We propose a taxonomy based on the types of information that attention o...