The research compared cognitive test results of contact sport athletes (football and hockey), to those of non-contact sport athletes (track and crew) at the beginning and end of one season. According to the research, as the Huffington Post notes, 22 percent of those students who participated in contact sports scored lower in learning skills than expected, compared to only 4 percent of non-contact sport athletes.
Thomas McAllister, the study’s lead author and the Millennium Professor of Psychiatry and Director of Neuropsychiatry at the Geisel School, explained to the Huffington Post, “The good news is that we did not find that a season of essentially hitting your head over and over again was associated with widespread deterioration in cognitive performance.“
”Nevertheless,“ McAllister added, ”it does suggest the possibility that there’s a subgroup playing their sport who end up performing worse than they should have at the end of the season.“
Read the full story, published 5/16/12 by the Huffington Post.