Remembering your past: The effects of concussion on autobiographical memory recall

Abstract

To date, research focusing on long-term memory functioning post concussion is limited. The purpose of the current study was to investigate the effects of concussion on long-term episodic autobiographical memory, once acute postconcussive symptoms have abated. Individuals with and without a history of concussion were asked to recall autobiographical memories from different life periods. The details, self-reported vividness, ease of recall, and completeness of these memories were assessed. Results indicated that although both control and previously concussed participants were equally able to recall autobiographical memories from all life periods, the transcribed memories of previously concussed participants were less detailed, were less complex, and revealed less active involvement in recollection. Specifically, memories of control participants contained more words and a higher proportion of pronouns, personal pronouns, cognitive process words, perceptual process words, and past-tense words. Deficits were found regardless of the frequency or recency of concussion. Concussion information, limitations, and implications of the current findings are discussed.

Keywords:

• Concussion
• Mild traumatic brain injury
• Memory
• Episodic memory
• Autobiographical memory

Notes

¹ Thus, it may be useful to investigate prevalence and effects of head injury via self-report, and indeed other researchers have previously used this methodology to obtain participant concussion history (e.g., Baker & Good, 2014; Belanger, Spiegel, & Vanderploeg, 2010; Bernstein, 2002).

² A word count and word pattern analysis was adopted as they provide a highly reliable, objective method of assessing content differences in reported memories (Hart, 2001; Pennebaker, Mehl, & Neiderhoffer, 2003). Previous studies have not used total word count as a measure of detail in reported memories. However, the authors judged this method to have advantages in this instance over other scoring methods, such as those used by Piolino et al. (2007) where individual judges rate the qualities of the reported memories on a variety of dimensions and assign a score on a 4-point scale.

³ All acute symptoms were reported to have abated at the time of testing.