Cognitive Impairment Among Collegiate African American Student-Athletes Who Have One Or More Concussions

Abstract

The purpose of this research was to examine concussion induced cognitive impairment among collegiate athletes for a long term. This study attempted to determine if there was a significant decrease in cognitive function in student-athletes with a history of concussion after one year of concussion. Totally 46 student athletes who were qualified was included in this study. Of all the 46 student athletes, 14 are females, and 32 males from the following sports: Women’s Basketball (n=3), Men’s Basketball (n=2), Football (n=30), Softball (n=7), Women’s Tennis (n=2), and Women’s Volleyball (n=2) (Table 1). The age range was18-23 years old. Seven of them had two or more concussions Results of this study showed that while all the scores of the ImPACT test improved after one year of concussion for the student-athletes with one or more concussions, there was significant improvement only in the processing speed. For the student-athletes with two or more concussions, the processing speed score after one year of concussions was a little lower even than the score after initial concussion, but it is not statistically significant.