Beginning of the Pandemic: COVID-19-Elicited Anxiety as a Predictor of Working Memory Performance

Abstract

Increasing evidence indicates that the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic is associated with adverse psychological effects, including heightened levels of anxiety. This study examined whether COVID-19-related anxiety levels during the early stage of the pandemic predicted demanding working memory (WM) updating performance. Altogether, 201 healthy adults (age range, 18–50) mostly from North America and the British Isles were recruited to this study via the crowdsourcing site www.prolific.co. The results showed that higher levels of COVID-19-related anxiety during the first weeks of the pandemic outbreak were associated with poorer WM performance as measured by the n-back paradigm. Critically, the unique role of COVID-19-related anxiety on WM could not be explained by demographic factors, or other psychological factors such as state and trait anxiety or fluid intelligence. Moreover, across three assessment points spanning 5–6 weeks, COVID-19-related anxiety levels tended to decrease over time. This pattern of results may reflect an initial psychological “shock wave” of the pandemic, the cognitive effects of which may linger for some time, albeit the initial anxiety associated with the pandemic would change with habituation and increasing information. Our results contribute to the understanding of cognitive–affective reactions to a major disaster.

A Standardized Prospective Memory Evaluation of the Effects of COVID-19 Confinement on Young Students

“…As is well known, several studies have already shown that higher levels of anxiety are associated with poor WM performance [54,55]. In line with this evidence, during the first period of lockdown, Fellman and collaborators [56] confirmed a negative correlation between anxiety levels and WM performance, and Santangelo et al [57] uncovered marked difficulties in memory and attention in a large sample of adults mainly constituted by non-workers.…”

“…So far, no study has explored gender differences in PM tasks during the COVID-19 epidemic. To date, only the results of Fellman and colleagues [56] indicated that the impact of COVID-19 on WM cannot be explained by gender differences. It must also be considered that all of our students attended the first year for the bachelor's degree in psychology; thus, our results cannot be generalized to all university students.…”

“…As far as we know, although previous studies have already shown a negative impact of the pandemic on different psychological and cognitive abilities [13,15,16,56,57], none of them measured the effects of the pandemic on PM tasks using standardized tests and their relationship with WM processes (but see [56] for WM). This constitutes the innovative and original aspect of our work with respect to most of the current studies conducted during the time of the pandemic, which included only subjective measurements.…”

Video-Based Remote Administration of Cognitive Assessments and Interventions: a Comparison with In-Lab Administration

“…Finally, outside stressors due to COVID-19 may have influenced retention rates in our training studies. Specifically, previous research has found that COVID-19 has negatively impacted subjective well-being and cognitive functioning (Zacher and Rudolph, 2021;Fellman et al, 2020). Participants may have been less motivated to participate in research studies given that COVID-19 required classes and extracurricular activities to be held completely online as well.…”

Stronger connectivity and higher extraversion protect against stress-related deterioration of cognitive functions

“…By contrast, it is generally accepted that individual differences in cognitive performance are mediated by differences in dynamical neural systems and brain-wide interactions. Dynamic responses of resting-state networks affect memory performance 10 , 11 and visual attention 12 – 14 . Importantly, both memory and attention influence adherence to COVID-19 pandemic regulations 15 and vulnerability to stress 16 , 17 , a finding which could be related back to individual variations in brain connectivity.…”