ABSTRACT
This chapter utilizes Norman and Shallice's model of cognitive control to explain the treatment rationale behind the intervention approach used with two patients who presented with similar symptoms but with different causes. It argues that interpreting the dyscontrol syndromes in terms of information-processing deficits that may help the rehabilitation professional to understand how the processes of change might occur. The loss of control over subordinate cognitive skills is most commonly attributed to frontal lobe dysfunction producing deficits in what Luria described as the programming, regulation and verification of behaviour. Shallice details a model of the organization of levels of cognitive control that relies essentially on the interaction of four processing levels: cognitive units, schemas, contention scheduling and supervisory attentional system. Cognitive units are basic cognitive abilities that relate to specific neuroanatomical or neuropsychological systems, for example perceptual abilities, memory, language and so forth.
