Abstract
Here, we sought to quantify the effects of experienced fear and worry, engendered by the COVID-19 pandemic, on both cognitive abilities-speed of information processing, task-set shifting, and proactive control-as well as economic risk-taking. Leveraging a repeated-measures cross-sectional design, we examined the performance of 1517 participants, collected during the early phase of the pandemic in the US (April-June 2020), finding that self-reported pandemic-related worry predicted deficits in information processing speed and maintenance of goal-related contextual information. In a classic economic risk-taking task, we observed that worried individuals' choices were more sensitive to the described outcome probabilities of risky actions. Overall, these results elucidate the cognitive consequences of a large-scale, unpredictable, and uncontrollable stressor, which may in turn play an important role in individuals' understanding of, and adherence to safety directives both in the current crisis and future public health emergencies.
Highlights
The COVID-19 pandemic represents a significant threat to the physical, mental, and economic well-being of people globally
We observed a strong relationship between the number of responses in each U.S state and that state’s population in 2019 (r = 0.976, p < .0001; collapsed over waves), suggesting that the geographical distribution of participants was consistent with the state-level population distribution (Fig 1B)
We examined whether pandemic-related worry predicted deficits in the proactive behavioural index (PBI) [49]—an response times (RTs)-based measure of proactive control, calculated as (RTAY—RTBX) / (RTAY + RTBX)—finding that individuals with higher Fear of Coronavirus Questionnaire (FCQ) scores had lower PBIs (Fig 4B;db = -0.0020, CI = [-0.0034, -0.0005], p = 0.010; see S9 Table in S1 File), controlling for gender, age, perceived risk of contracting COVID-19, self-reported, and financial
Summary
The COVID-19 pandemic represents a significant threat to the physical, mental, and economic well-being of people globally. While a spate of recent work has documented the direct effects of the pandemic on mental health [1,2,3,4], less is known about the consequences it might hold for cognitive functioning Identifying and understanding these cognitive and behavioural consequences is especially critical as governments continue to face the challenge of controlling the spread of the virus and mitigating its social, economic, and psychological consequences. Simple decisions—like refraining from sharing a coffee with friends or registering for the vaccine—are the key elements of the global fight against COVID-19, yet concerning trends suggest declining adherence to these regulations and far-from-universal vaccine acceptance [6, 7] Successful navigation of these situations is thought to rely on a key set of related cognitive processes often referred to as executive functions [8, 9]—broadly defined as monitoring and selection of behaviours in accordance with internal goals [10]. We elucidate the impact of the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic on both executive function and risky decision-making
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