Traumatic brain injuries (TBIs) have been shown to create serious cognitive deficits. A concussion is a type of mild TBI that has been shown to cause similar deficits. Individuals who have sustained one or more concussions are statistically more likely to have deficient spatial orientation capabilities, lower memory scores, and perform worse on mathematics and verbal tasks (Iverson, 2004). The current study compared three head injury categories: concussions diagnosed by a physician, no concussion history, and a new category omitted from prior research, 'undiagnosed concussions', wherein an individual has had no formal diagnosis of a concussion but believes they have sustained one ('self diagnosed').It was hypothesized that participants with both physician-diagnosed and 'self-diagnosed' concussions would perform significantly worse on a variety of cognitive assessments than participants with no diagnosed concussion history.In addition, participants with self-diagnosed concussions were expected to perform significantly better than participants with a history of diagnosed concussions.
