The reduction in information that arouses their attention creates a different perspective. Their sense of identity and their memories of the past are narrowed down to the information that arouses their attention. Those memories are probably stored in the same region of the cortex. Their sense of other people and what they are doing is connected to the information that arouses their attention too. Their senses of space, direction and time have been woven into the methods for selecting and presenting actions and activities. Their lack of sense of ownership becomes a problem when they start walking around and getting into other people's belongings. Their sense of independence is a source of conflict when they understand what doing an activity is because they believe they can still do the activities that they used to do.
The peculiar characteristic of a cognitive disability is an obsolete identity because they are oblivious to the reduction in their cognitive abilities. What they think they can do, say they can do, is better than what they can really do. They honestly assume that they can still do everything that they used to and as well as they used to do it. Their self-reports are useless at best but often dangerously misleading because other people believe them.
Client centred approaches are a hazard to people with obsolete identities because they are based on the assumption that the self-report is correct. Legal testimony is based on the same assumption; the person with a cognitive disability truly believes that they are telling the truth when they testify.