ArticleProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America2021
The impact of social isolation and changes in work patterns on ongoing thought during the first COVID-19 lockdown in the United Kingdom.
Article in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 26 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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Who cites it
26 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- The scar that takes time to heal: A systematic review of COVID-19-related stigma targets, antecedents, and outcomes.Frontiers in psychology · 2022Pooled it
- Towards naturalistic social neuroscience: A multi-level framework integrating real-world phenotyping, neurobiology, and computational mechanisms.Cognitive, affective & behavioral neuroscience · 2026Review
- Common thought patterns reflect generosity, fairness, and social context.Scientific reports · 2026Article
- Capturing naturalistic thoughts using a precision experience sampling idiographic approach.Cognitive research: principles and implications · 2026Article
- Emotion regulation success involves systematic gradient-based reconfigurations of large-scale activation patterns in the human brain.PLoS biology · 2026Article
- Article
- Self-reports map the landscape of task states derived from brain imaging.Communications psychology · 2025Article
- Article
- Electrophysiological signatures of ongoing thoughts during naturalistic behavior.Imaging neuroscience (Cambridge, Mass.) · 2025Article
- Heterogeneity of benefit finding in maintenance hemodialysis patients: a decision tree-based subgroup analysis of self-efficacy and social support.Frontiers in psychiatry · 2025Article
- A multidimensional quiet quitting scale: Development and test of a measure of quiet quitting.PloS one · 2025Article
- Patterns of ongoing thought in the real world and their links to mental health and well-being.PLOS mental health · 2025Article
- Differences in ongoing thought between autistic and non-autistic adults.Scientific reports · 2024Article
- A social network analysis approach to assess COVID19-related disruption to substance use treatment and informal social interactions among people who use drugs in Scotland.Addiction science & clinical practice · 2024Article
- Hippocampal sharp-wave ripples correlate with periods of naturally occurring self-generated thoughts in humans.Nature communications · 2024Article
- The impact of COVID-19 on the mental and sexual health of patients with infertility: a prospective before-and-after study.Reproductive biology and endocrinology : RB&E · 2024Article
- Unveiling Coronasomnia: Pandemic Stress and Sleep Problems During the COVID-19 Outbreak.Nature and science of sleep · 2024Review
- Experience sampling reveals the role that covert goal states play in task-relevant behavior.Scientific reports · 2023Article
- Depression and anxiety during and after episodes of COVID-19 in the community.Scientific reports · 2023Article
- Dreams share phenomenological similarities with task-unrelated thoughts and relate to variation in trait rumination and COVID-19 concern.Scientific reports · 2023Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
8 authors.
Funding
Abstract
The COVID-19 pandemic led to lockdowns in countries across the world, changing the lives of billions of people. The United Kingdom's first national lockdown, for example, restricted people's ability to socialize and work. The current study examined how changes to socializing and working during this lockdown impacted ongoing thought patterns in daily life. We compared the prevalence of thought patterns between two independent real-world, experience-sampling cohorts, collected before and during lockdown. In both samples, young (18 to 35 y) and older (55+ y) participants completed experience-sampling measures five times daily for 7 d. Dimension reduction was applied to these data to identify common "patterns of thought." Linear mixed modeling compared the prevalence of each thought pattern 1) before and during lockdown, 2) in different age groups, and 3) across different social and activity contexts. During lockdown, when people were alone, social thinking was reduced, but on the rare occasions when social interactions were possible, we observed a greater increase in social thinking than prelockdown. Furthermore, lockdown was associated with a reduction in future-directed problem solving, but this thought pattern was reinstated when individuals engaged in work. Therefore, our study suggests that the lockdown led to significant changes in ongoing thought patterns in daily life and that these changes were associated with changes to our daily routine that occurred during lockdown.
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