The Cognitive Consequences of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Members of the General Population in Italy: A Preliminary Study on Executive Inhibition

Abstract

The pandemic period which has characterized the last two years has been associated with increasingly worsening psychological conditions, and previous studies have reported severe levels of anxiety, mood disorder, and psychopathological alteration in the general population. In particular, worldwide populations have appeared to present post-traumatic stress symptoms (PTSS). Surprisingly, no studies have evaluated the effect of COVID-related PTSS on cognitive functioning. This study focused on the association between high levels of PTSS related to COVID-19 and alterations in executive functioning by considering executive inhibitions in populations not infected by the virus. Ninety respondents from the Italian population participated in the study. A higher percentage of PTSS was reported. Moreover, respondents with high post-traumatic symptomatology presented deficits in the inhibition of preponderant responses, demonstrating an executive deficit which could be expressed by a difficulty in controlling goal-directed actions. This was underlined by worse performances in elaborating incongruent stimuli in the Stroop task and no-go stimuli in the Go/No-Go task. This report presents preliminary findings underlining the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic on cognitive functions. The results confirmed a persistently higher post-traumatic symptomatology related to the COVID-19 pandemic in the Italian population and highlighted an association with cognitive inhibition impairment.