Memory and Attention Adaptation Training

Book excerpt: "During Visit 1, Clinicians provide survivors with an introduction and overview of the MAAT program and review the eight-session training schedule. The education component covers cancer background, significance, and causes topics as well as helping survivors recognize that not all memory/attention failures are cancer/treatment related (re-attribution). MAAT highlights the important rationale that, while we can't know at the causes of cancer-related memory problems, we do know that factors such as stress, fatigue, and the divided attention of busy, daily life also contribute to memory problems - and we can change environment, stress response, and manage fatigue through the use of compensatory strategies aimed a minimizing the effects of memory failures. Self-awareness is introduced, and self-monitoring forms are explained and assigned for homework in order to identify the environmental, affective, and cognitive antecedents of memory failures in daily life. Survivors are guided through a Progressive Muscle Relaxation procedure and instructed for home practice with a provided recording"--