Research Letter: TBI Severity Moderates the Association Between Subjective and Objective Attention in Older Veterans.
Peter Rantins, Monica Ly, Alexandra L Clark and 5 others
PMID 37712765WHAT IT FOUND
In older veterans with moderate-to-severe TBI history, self-reported attention problems aligned closely with poor test performance.
This link was absent in those without TBI history. Self-reported memory and language concerns did not correlate with objective deficits regardless of TBI history.
Key findings
01Moderate-to-severe TBI history strengthened the association between subjective attention difficulties and objective attention performance.
02Subjective attention was not associated with objective attention across the whole sample.
03TBI history did not moderate the associations between subjective and objective memory or language.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for SLPs
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What it does not show
The sample consisted primarily of white men, limiting generalizability. TBI history was based on self-report rather than medical records. Moderate and severe TBI were combined into one group due to missing data. The neuropsychological battery lacked sensitive measures for visuospatial function and some aspects of executive function. Performance validity was not assessed, so it is unclear if some objective scores were influenced by effort.
Declared interests
Funded by U.S. Government and NIH grants. The study used publicly available DoD-ADNI data.
The easy way to misread this
Do not assume that all veterans with any history of TBI will have subjective complaints that match objective tests. The strong alignment between self-report and test performance was specific to the moderate-to-severe TBI group and the attention domain. In those with mild TBI or no TBI, and for memory and language domains, subjective and objective measures did not align in this way.