Memory Problems after COVID Infection: An Exploratory Study

The current study tries to explore the effect of severity and duration of recovery from COVID-19 infection on visual memory scanning ability in 55 male and 65 female individuals with a mean age of 28.3 years (SD = 7.61). An android-based application (Psych Lab 101 version 2.1.2) was used to administer the Sternberg scanning test and visual memory scanning ability was indexed on the basis of accuracy and reaction time. The severity of the COVID- 19 infection was measured on the basis of a self-report measure “scale for subjective severity of COVID-19”. There were four groups of participants who were categorized on the basis of duration of recovery from COVID-19 infection, viz., “3 months”, “6 months” and “9 months” and one group “with no history of COVID-19 infection”. There was a significant statistical difference (p < 0.05) between the groups of subjects in terms of their reaction time (RT) in the memory task; the maximum response latency being shown by subjects who had most recently recovered from COVID-19. There was no significant difference between the four groups in terms of accuracy. The findings of the present study imply that COVID-19 infection creates mild deficits in cognitive functioning in recovered patients evidenced in terms of increased processing speed and the deficit is more in recently recovered patients.