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Introduction Repeated sports-related concussion has been associated with cognitive deficits, like other forms of traumatic brain injury. Football speed players (FSP; e.g. quarterbacks) are at greater risk of cognitive impairment compared to football non-speed players (FNP). Verbal fluency is typically comprised of two tasks: letter fluency (LF) and semantic fluency (SF). Verbal clustering (production of continuous words belonging to the same category or subcategory) and switching (abandoning an exhausted semantic cluster to a new one in order to produce more words) reflect executive control and strategy use. We examined LF, SF, as well as LF and SF switching and clustering performance in retired FSP, FNP, and healthy comparison (HC) participants. Methods The sample consisted of 28 HC, 17 retired FSP, and 53 retired FNP. ANOVAs were conducted to determine group differences on LF, SF, switching, and clustering. FSP and FNP did not differ in concussion frequency. Results We found the HC group outperformed the FSP group in LF, p = 0.042, ηp2 = 0.07. For SF, the HC and FNP groups outperformed the FSP group, p = 0.013, ηp2 = 0.09. Furthermore, we found the HC group outperformed both football groups in SF switching, p = 0.000, ηp2 = 0.17. Conclusion As expected, the HC group outperformed the FSP group on LF and SF. Also, the FNP group outperformed the FSP group on SF. Interestingly, FSP displayed generally worse performances, supporting the notion that their experience of sub-concussive blows puts them at greater risk for cognitive impairment. Further investigation is needed with larger sample sizes to evaluate SF and other cognitive deficits in the FSP participants. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction Repeated sports-related concussions have been associated with cognitive deficits, similar to other forms of traumatic brain injury. We investigated three different measures of executive ability derived from the Trail Making Test part B (TMT-B) in healthy comparison (HC) adults and retired football players. Methods The sample consisted of 32 HC, 15 retired football speed players (FSP; e.g. quarterbacks), and 53 retired football non-speed players (FNP) participants. Participants were administered both TMT part A (TMT-A) and TMT-B, and total time for completion was recorded. A series of ANCOVAs, controlling for age and education were conducted to evaluate group differences in executive abilities. Executive measures included the TMT-B raw score (i.e. seconds to complete TMT-B), the raw score difference (in seconds) between TMT-A and TMT-B (TMT-BA), and the difference between a predicted TMT-B score (TMT-BP) and the obtained TMT-B score (TMT-BBP). Correlations between TMT-B, TMT-BA, and TMT-BBP and other executive functioning tests (i.e. letter fluency and animal naming) were evaluated. Results Results revealed that the HC group outperformed both retired football player groups on all measures of executive ability derived from TMT-B, p's < 0.05, ηps2 = 0.18–0.45. Furthermore, the retired FNP TMT-B and TMT-BA were significantly correlated with both letter fluency and animal naming, r's = −0.40 to −0.36, p's < 0.05. Discussion We found that the HC group outperformed both retired football player groups on all three TMT variables. In our retired FNP sample, more TMT variables correlated with executive functioning measures which suggests that TMT-B and TMT-BA are likely better measures of executive ability than TMT-BBP. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]