NOTE ON NORMATIVE DATA FOR A TEST SENSITIVE TO CONCUSSION IN AUSTRALIAN RULES FOOTBALLERS

The medical diagnosis of concussion and assessment of recovery in athletes has traditionally been subjectively based on clinical symptoms such as headache, nausea, and dizziness. Recently, there has been increasing interest in the use of neuropsychological tests as objective measures of recovery from concussion. In particular, performance on tests of speed of information processing, such as the Digit-Symbol subtest (DS) from the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale-Revised (WAIS-R), has been found to be reduced in the first weeks after concussion. In the present study, baseline DS data were obtained from Australian Rules footballers. DS was administered to a sample of 200 professional Australian Rules football players according to standard WAIS-R procedures. Players were then grouped according to concussive history. No player had been concussed within six months of the study. No significant differences were found between the groups. Therefore, while previous research suggests that performance on DS may be affected in the first few weeks following concussive injury, the present results demonstrated that DS performance does not differentiate concussed and nonconcussed players by the sixth month posttrauma. These data constitute normative values against which the DS can be interpreted in concussed footballers in the early stages of recovery.