Date of Award

Spring 2025

Project Type

Thesis

Program or Major

Communication Sciences and Disorders

Degree Name

Master of Science

First Advisor

Amy E Ramage

Second Advisor

Kate Christison-Lagay

Third Advisor

Casey Roark

Abstract

Introduction: The current study examined how individuals with mild traumatic brain injuries (mTBIs) can shift their attentional efforts in real-time. These abilities were examined within a dual-task, during which individuals had to perform two tasks simultaneously. The first research question compared the performance of healthy controls and concussion participants on individual subtasks of the dual-task. The second research question explored how effective healthy controls versus concussion participants were in shifting their attentional resources. The final research question examined the effect of fatigue, specifically whether concussion participants would demonstrate a greater fatigue effect and have more difficulty at the end of the task.

Methods: 51 undergraduate and graduate students were recruited as participants for the current study. The healthy control group was comprised of 32 individuals. The concussion group was comprised of 19 individuals with self-reports of a head injury within one month and five years prior to the start of the study. Participants completed 2 different testing sessions. The first testing session was used to collect demographic information and complete cognitive assessments to characterize the sample. The experimental dual-task, composed of a letter identification task and a tracking task, was completed during the second testing session. Performance for each individual task was recorded (d’ (letter identification) and TTD (tracking)) and analyzed within separate generalized linear mixed models (GLMMs).

Results: Healthy controls and concussion participants did not significantly differ in performance on the letter identification task (d’). For the tracking task, healthy controls had significantly greater TTDs, indicative of worse tracking, compared to concussion participants. However, healthy controls demonstrated worse tracking during allocation policies that did not prioritize the tracking task, indicating appropriate shifting of attentional resources, compared to concussion participants who demonstrated comparable TTDs regardless of the allocation policy. Additionally, all participants demonstrated a fatigue effect for the tracking task, having worse tracking at the end of the task compared to the beginning.

Discussion: The results of the current study revealed that healthy controls are able to shift their attentional resources in real-time. Concussion participants did not demonstrate this ability, and as a result, a true attentional deficit within this group could not be identified. Additional analyses revealed that the control and experimental groups did not differ significantly on most demographic variables and experimental measures (i.e. NIH Toolbox), suggesting that more robust findings were not identified because the groups were too similar. Future research should include individuals with more severe injuries and persisting deficits and seek opportunities to increase task difficulty.

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