TY - JOUR
T1 - The impact of COVID-19 social isolation on aspects of emotional and social cognition
AU - Bland, Amy Rachel
AU - Roiser, Jonathan Paul
AU - Mehta, Mitul Ashok
AU - Sahakian, Barbara Jacquelyn
AU - Robbins, Trevor William
AU - Elliott, Rebecca
N1 - Funding Information:
BJS consults for Cambridge Cognition, Greenfield BioVentures and Cassava Sciences. She receives funding from the Wallitt Foundation and Eton College. Her research is conducted within the NIHR Brain Injury MedTech and in vitro diagnostics Cooperative (MIC, Cambridge) and the NIHR Cambridge Biomedical Research Centre (Mental Health and Neurodegeneration Themes). TWR provides consultancy for Cambridge Cognition, Lundbeck, Greenfield Bioventures, Cassava, Takeda and Unilever, and has research grants with Shionogi and GlaxoSmithKline.
Funding Information:
The authors would like to thank Dr Niki Ray, Professor Paul Holmes and colleagues at Manchester Metropolitan University for supporting this research.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2021 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.
PY - 2022/1/2
Y1 - 2022/1/2
N2 - The present study aimed to examine the impact of COVID-19 social isolation upon aspects of emotional and social cognitive function. We predicted that greater impairments in emotional and social cognition would be observed in people who experienced more disruption to their usual social connectivity during COVID-19 social isolation. Healthy volunteers (N = 92) without prior mental health problems completed assessments online in their own homes during the most stringent period of the first COVID-19 “lockdown” in the UK (March–May 2020). Measures included two questionnaires probing levels of social isolation, anxiety levels, as well as five neuropsychological tasks assessing emotional and social cognition. Reduced positive bias in emotion recognition was related to reduced contact with friends, household size and communication method during social isolation. In addition, reduced positive bias for attention to emotional faces was related to frequency of contact with friends during social isolation. Greater cooperative behaviour in an ultimatum game was associated with more frequent contact with both friends and family during social isolation. The present study provides important insights into the detrimental effects of subjective and objective social isolation upon affective cognitive processes.
AB - The present study aimed to examine the impact of COVID-19 social isolation upon aspects of emotional and social cognitive function. We predicted that greater impairments in emotional and social cognition would be observed in people who experienced more disruption to their usual social connectivity during COVID-19 social isolation. Healthy volunteers (N = 92) without prior mental health problems completed assessments online in their own homes during the most stringent period of the first COVID-19 “lockdown” in the UK (March–May 2020). Measures included two questionnaires probing levels of social isolation, anxiety levels, as well as five neuropsychological tasks assessing emotional and social cognition. Reduced positive bias in emotion recognition was related to reduced contact with friends, household size and communication method during social isolation. In addition, reduced positive bias for attention to emotional faces was related to frequency of contact with friends during social isolation. Greater cooperative behaviour in an ultimatum game was associated with more frequent contact with both friends and family during social isolation. The present study provides important insights into the detrimental effects of subjective and objective social isolation upon affective cognitive processes.
KW - COVID-19
KW - mental health
KW - Social cognition
KW - social isolation
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85101981415&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1080/02699931.2021.1892593
DO - 10.1080/02699931.2021.1892593
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85101981415
SN - 0269-9931
VL - 36
SP - 49
EP - 58
JO - Cognition and Emotion
JF - Cognition and Emotion
IS - 1
ER -