story by Claire Miller
A person’s working memory (WM) allows them to process information, multitask, pay attention and block out distractions, among other mental processes.
These cognitive abilities can become harder when a person experiences traumatic stress, as people across the world did during the COVID-19 pandemic.
But mindfulness – a cognitive process of being deliberately aware and alert in the present moment, without judgment – could be one method that individuals use to improve their WM when faced with traumatic experiences.
Doctoral student Hunggu Cho and Ken Matheny Center for Stress, Trauma and Resilience co-directors Ken Rice and Jeff Ashby co-authored a study in the Journal of Loss and Trauma on the impact of COVID-19 stress on WM, and how mindfulness can mitigate its negative effects.
Four hundred and eighty-four college students from the U.S. and Israel participated in their study, which asked students to complete a 40-minute survey.
The survey included several questions that asked students to report their experiences with WM, their stress levels related to COVID-19 and mindfulness. Participants also completed a Symmetry Span Task, which tests a person's WM with a timed series of tasks, such as memorizing the positions of red squares in a grid and recalling them later on.
The researchers reported that measuring task-based performances of WM and subjective self-reporting of WM both hold importance. The task-based measurement of WM is related to optimal performance of WM in controlled settings, such as students’ performance in test-taking environments, while self-reported WM is represented in situations related to planning and executing daily tasks.
Participants reported low levels of COVID-19 stress and moderate levels of mindfulness and self-reported WM, according to their findings.
The study suggests that COVID-related stress may impact WM differently depending on the situation. When other factors were considered, COVID-related stress was significantly linked to lower performance on task-based WM tests but did not affect how people reported their own WM abilities. This suggests that stress may have a greater impact on WM in structured testing environments than in everyday tasks.
The study’s results also found that mindfulness had a small but significant impact on the interaction between COVID-19 stress and WM for self-reported WM abilities. This suggests that mindfulness could help enhance daily WM tasks, when under COVID stress.
“Despite some reservations about measuring mindfulness, our results did support a positive association between higher levels of mindfulness and higher levels of both self-reported and task-based WM,” they wrote. “The findings suggest a few possible interpretations. For instance, it may be that strengthening mindfulness can improve WM, which could be examined in future studies. Another possibility is that mindfulness and WM are related because they are tapping similar cognitive or attentional components.”