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Do concerns about COVID-19 impair sustained attention?
Jun, Jihyang; Toh, Yi Ni; Sisk, Caitlin A; Remington, Roger W; Lee, Vanessa G.
  • Jun J; Department of Psychology, University of Minnesota, 75 East River Road, S504 Elliott Hall, Minneapolis, MN, 55455, USA. junxx082@umn.edu.
  • Toh YN; Department of Psychology, University of Minnesota, 75 East River Road, S504 Elliott Hall, Minneapolis, MN, 55455, USA.
  • Sisk CA; Department of Psychology, University of Minnesota, 75 East River Road, S504 Elliott Hall, Minneapolis, MN, 55455, USA.
  • Remington RW; Department of Psychology, University of Minnesota, 75 East River Road, S504 Elliott Hall, Minneapolis, MN, 55455, USA.
  • Lee VG; Department of Psychology, University of Minnesota, 75 East River Road, S504 Elliott Hall, Minneapolis, MN, 55455, USA.
Cogn Res Princ Implic ; 6(1): 41, 2021 05 27.
Article in English | MEDLINE | ID: covidwho-1247609
ABSTRACT
The novel coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has considerably heightened health and financial concerns for many individuals. Similar concerns, such as those associated with poverty, impair performance on cognitive control tasks. If ongoing concerns about COVID-19 substantially increase the tendency to mind wander in tasks requiring sustained attention, these worries could degrade performance on a wide range of tasks, leading, for example, to increased traffic accidents, diminished educational achievement, and lower workplace productivity. In two pre-registered experiments, we investigated the degree to which young adults' concerns about COVID-19 correlated with their ability to sustain attention. Experiment 1 tested mainly European participants during an early phase of the pandemic. After completing a survey probing COVID-related concerns, participants engaged in a continuous performance task (CPT) over two, 4-min blocks, during which they responded to city scenes that occurred 90% of the time and withheld responses to mountain scenes that occurred 10% of the time. Despite large and stable individual differences, performance on the scene CPT did not significantly correlate with the severity of COVID-related concerns obtained from the survey. Experiment 2 tested US participants during a later phase of the pandemic. Once again, CPT performance did not significantly correlate with COVID concerns expressed in a pre-task survey. However, participants who had more task-unrelated thoughts performed more poorly on the CPT. These findings suggest that although COVID-19 increased anxiety in a broad swath of society, young adults are able to hold these concerns in a latent format, minimizing their impact on performance in a demanding sustained attention task.
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Full text: Available Collection: International databases Database: MEDLINE Main subject: Anxiety / Pattern Recognition, Visual / Psychomotor Performance / Attention / COVID-19 Type of study: Observational study / Prognostic study Limits: Adult / Female / Humans / Male / Young adult Country/Region as subject: North America / Europa Language: English Journal: Cogn Res Princ Implic Year: 2021 Document Type: Article Affiliation country: S41235-021-00303-3

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Full text: Available Collection: International databases Database: MEDLINE Main subject: Anxiety / Pattern Recognition, Visual / Psychomotor Performance / Attention / COVID-19 Type of study: Observational study / Prognostic study Limits: Adult / Female / Humans / Male / Young adult Country/Region as subject: North America / Europa Language: English Journal: Cogn Res Princ Implic Year: 2021 Document Type: Article Affiliation country: S41235-021-00303-3