ArticleFrontiers in psychology2020
Beginning of the Pandemic: COVID-19-Elicited Anxiety as a Predictor of Working Memory Performance.
Article in Frontiers in psychology, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 12 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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Who cites it
12 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 21 citations in OpenAlex.
- Near transfer to an unrelated N-back task mediates the effect of N-back working memory training on matrix reasoning.Nature human behaviour · 2022Pooled it
- The impact of psychological distress on working memory during COVID-19 by disentangling cognitive deficits from emotional burden.Scientific reports · 2026Article
- The Effects of General Mental Health Symptomatology, COVID Anxiety, and Sociodemographic Factors on Pandemic-Induced Negative and Positive Trauma Effects: A Polish Survey from the Late Stages of the Pandemic.Journal of clinical medicine · 2025Article
- A global survey on the associations between the lockdown group, free memory recall and emotional responses during the COVID-19 lockdown.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Health Anxiety and Its Relationship with Academic Performance and Learning Styles among Nursing Students during COVID-19 Pandemic.Journal of caring sciences · 2025Review
- Anxiety and perceived social support as moderators of cognitive and emotional well-being in populations affected by COVID-19.Frontiers in public health · 2025Article
- Assessing the influence of COVID-19 lockdown measures on cognition and behavior in school age children in Arba Minch Health and Demographic Surveillance site, Southern Ethiopia: A cross-sectional study.PLOS global public health · 2024Article
- Specific Pandemic-Related Worries Predict Higher Attention-Related Errors and Negative Affect Independent of Trait Anxiety in UK-Based Students.Cognitive therapy and research · 2023Article
- Determinants of improving the relationship between corporate culture and work performance: Illusion or reality of serial mediation of leadership and work engagement in a crisis period?Frontiers in psychology · 2023Article
- The Evolution of Psychological and Behavioral Consequences of Self-Isolation During Lockdown: A Longitudinal Study Across United Kingdom and Italy.Frontiers in psychiatry · 2022Article
- Stronger connectivity and higher extraversion protect against stress-related deterioration of cognitive functions.Scientific reports · 2021Article
- A Standardized Prospective Memory Evaluation of the Effects of COVID-19 Confinement on Young Students.Journal of clinical medicine · 2021Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
5 authors at 3 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
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.
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