Age and adult attachment style predict psychological distress in the Singapore general population during COVID-19.

To date, there is increasing evidence to suggest that age and adult attachment styles, such as secure, anxious and avoidant attachment are predictive or protective for psychological distress. The study aimed to investigate the extent to which age and adult attachment style, measured by the Attachment Style Questionnaire, predicted psychological distress, measured by the Kessler 10 Psychological Distress Scale, in the Singapore general population during COVID-19. Ninety-nine residents of Singapore (44 females, 52 males, 3 prefer not to state their gender) aged between 18 and 66 completed an online survey, which collected information on age, adult attachment styles and levels of psychological distress. Multiple regression analysis was performed to study the influence of predictive factors on psychological distress. The study identified 20.2%, 13.1% and 14.1% of participants reporting psychological distress at the mild, moderate and severe levels, respectively. The study also reported that age and psychological distress were negatively correlated, and that psychological distress was negatively correlated with both anxious and avoidant attachment styles. It was concluded that age and adult attachment style significantly predicted psychological distress in the Singapore general population during COVID-19. Further studies exploring other variables and risk factors are required to further consolidate these results. At the global level, these findings may help countries predict residents' reactions to future outbreaks and help them prepare strategies and approaches to address these situations.

Sleep does not cause false memories on a story-based test of suggestibility.

Sleep contributes to the consolidation of memories. This process may involve extracting the gist of learned material at the expense of details. It has thus been proposed that sleep might lead to false memory formation. Previous research examined the effect of sleep on false memory using the Deese-Roediger-McDermott (DRM) paradigm. Mixed results were found, including increases and decreases in false memory after sleep relative to wake. It has been questioned whether DRM false memories occur by the same processes as real-world false memories. Here, the effect of sleep on false memory was investigated using the Gudjonsson Suggestibility Scale. Veridical memory deteriorated after a 12-h period of wake, but not after a 12-h period including a night's sleep. No difference in false memory was found between conditions. Although the literature supports sleep-dependent memory consolidation, the results here call into question extending this to a gist-based false memory effect.

The facilitative effects of glucose ingestion on memory retrieval in younger and older adults: is task difficulty or task domain critical?

The ingestion of a glucose-containing drink has been shown to improve cognitive performance, particularly memory functioning. However, it remains unclear as to the extent to which task domain and task difficulty moderate the glucose enhancement effect. The aim of this research was to determine whether boosts in performance are restricted to particular classes of memory (episodic v. semantic) or to tasks of considerable cognitive load. A repeated measures (25 g glucose v. saccharin), counterbalanced, double-blind design was used with younger and older adults. Participants performed a battery of episodic (e.g. paired associate learning) and semantic memory (e.g. category verification) tasks under low and high cognitive load. Electrophysiological measures (heart rate and galvanic skin response) of arousal and mental effort were also gathered. The results indicated that whilst glucose appeared to aid episodic remembering, cognitive load did not exaggerate the facilitative effect. For semantic memory, there was little evidence to suggest that glucose can boost semantic memory retrieval even when the load was manipulated. One exception was that glucose facilitated performance during the difficult category fluency task. Regardless, the present findings are consistent with the domain-specific account in which glucose acts primarily on the hippocampal region, which is known to support episodic memory. The possible contribution of the hippocampus in semantic memory processing is also discussed.