Sports-Related Concussion in Collegiate Athletes: The Potential Benefits of Using Graded Neuropsychological Tests With High Ceilings.
Cheng-Chuan Chiang, Kale Hyder, Kathleen Bechtold and 5 others
PMID 38722244WHAT IT FOUND
Acutely concussed college athletes performed worse than peers on difficult cognitive tests but matched them on easy ones.
Average scores showed no significant differences, suggesting standard tests may miss subtle deficits that only appear under high cognitive load.
Key findings
01Athletes within two weeks of concussion responded slower and showed more variability than those with older injuries, but only on medium and hard difficulty tasks.
02When averaging performance across all difficulty levels, there were no significant differences between concussed and non-concussed groups.
03The hardest test level did not discriminate between groups because all subjects struggled with it.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for SLPs
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What it does not show
The study had a very small sample size, particularly in the acute group (12 athletes). Participants were from a single university, limiting generalizability to other institutions. The tests used did not measure skills directly related to academic performance, such as reading comprehension or essay writing. There was no baseline or pre-injury cognitive data for comparison, so it is unclear if differences were due to concussion or pre-existing traits.
Declared interests
Subjects were compensated $10 per hour. The study was approved by the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and Walter Reed Army Institute of Research Institutional Review Boards.
The easy way to misread this
Do not assume an athlete has fully recovered cognitively because their average test scores are normal. The study found significant deficits only when tasks were difficult, meaning subtle impairments can persist even when overall performance appears intact.