Impact of active and latent concerns about COVID-19 on attention
Posted on 2022-06-05 - 15:30
Abstract The interactions between emotion and attention are complex due to the multifaceted nature of attention. Adding to this complexity, the COVID-19 pandemic has altered the emotional landscape, broadly heightening health and financial concerns. Can the heightened concerns about COVID-19 impair one or more of the components of attention? To explore the connection between heightened concerns about COVID-19 and attention, in a preregistered study, we collected survey responses from 234 participants assessing levels of concerns surrounding COVID-19, followed by four psychophysics tasks hypothesized to tap into different aspects of attention: visual search, working memory, sustained attention, and cognitive control. We also measured task-unrelated thoughts. Results showed that task-unrelated thoughts, but not survey reports of concern levels, negatively correlated with sustained attention and cognitive control, while visual search and working memory remained robust to task-unrelated thoughts and survey-indicated concern levels. As a whole, these findings suggest that being concerned about COVID-19 does not interfere with cognitive function unless the concerns are active in the form of task-unrelated thoughts.
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Sisk, Caitlin A.; Toh, Yi Ni; Jun, Jihyang; Remington, Roger W.; Lee, Vanessa G. (2022). Impact of active and latent concerns about COVID-19 on attention. figshare. Collection. https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.c.6030971.v1
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AUTHORS (5)
CS
Caitlin A. Sisk
YT
Yi Ni Toh
JJ
Jihyang Jun
RR
Roger W. Remington
VL
Vanessa G. Lee