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Youth Executive Function and Experience During the First Year of the COVID-19 Pandemic
by Alice Aizza
Faculty Advisor: Jessica A. Church-Lang, PhD
The COVID-19 pandemic presented a series of stressors that could relate to psychological difficulties in children and adolescents. Executive functioning (EF) supports goal achievement and is associated with life success, including the sub-domains of updating, inhibition, and switching. One’s previous EF abilities predict future emotional experience in the presence of early adversity experiences, but little research has examined the global COVID-19 pandemic as a stressor. Therefore, this thesis examined pre-pandemic EF ability and an individual’s stability, or growth, in EF over time as predictors of self-reported emotional, cognitive, and social experiences during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic among children and adolescents. This longitudinal study used pre-pandemic EF data and an online COVID-19 survey administered during the first year of the pandemic (early and mid-pandemic timepoints). Multiple linear regressions with age as a covariate found that EF abilities predicted mid-pandemic but not early pandemic experience. Better pre-pandemic EF and updating abilities predicted worse mid-COVID-19 pandemic emotional and cognitive experiences, and better switching ability predicted worse cognitive experience only. These results were largely maintained when controlling for income, gender, diagnosis presence, mental health burden, and ADHD symptom burden. There was no relationship between pre-pandemic EF growth over time and early- nor mid-pandemic experience. Better cognitive abilities may contribute to worse functioning mid-COVID-19 pandemic by supporting the future-oriented thinking and meta-cognition needed for stress-induced worry and rumination during the pandemic.