Effects of repetitive head impacts from a single season on the cognitive functioning of youth male soccer players
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Repetitive head impacts have long-lasting negative effects on the cognition of athletes. For example, repetitive head impacts accumulated by adult professional soccer players throughout their careers result in long-term negative consequences on cognition. However, these effects on youth soccer players have not been extensively studied and need to be further evaluated. The purposes of this study were to quantify head impact exposure in youth elite soccer and to examine the effects of repetitive head impacts on the cognitive function of youth male soccer players. A prospective cohort study of a single boys U13 soccer team of 18 players (12.9 ± 0.2 years of age) was completed throughout a single soccer season (five months in duration). Head impact frequency data were recorded using impact monitoring mouthguards worn during practices and matches and subsequently video-verified. Cognitive function was assessed using cognitive-motor integration (CMI) tasks conducted before the first season match, every subsequent four weeks, and after the last match. Peak path velocity, absolute error, reaction time, full path movement time, and the number of direction reversals were CMI task outcome measures. Over a single soccer season, 1089 head impacts occurred with more head impacts occurring in practices (62.7%) than matches (37.3%). Midfielders experienced the most head impacts during practices (53.6% of practice impacts), and defenders experienced the most head impacts during matches (47.8% of match impacts). Repetitive head impact exposure by position was associated with significant decreases in absolute error (p < 0.001), increases in peak velocity (p < 0.001), and increases in reaction time (p < 0.001). Repetitive head impacts within a single soccer season were associated with measurable declines in some aspects of youth soccer players' cognitive function. Therefore, coaches should aim to reduce the number of head impacts experienced by male youth soccer players with a specific focus on reducing head impact exposure during practices.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".