Covid lockdowns would have had the same effect on prison memory

The coronavirus pandemic that has rocked the world for more than two years continues to take its toll. Nothing is free in life. Now, they’ve discovered that too it may have affected our memory.

People responsible for losing track of time it would have been the confinements. Many specialists had warned of the negative effects the lockdowns would have.

One example is that of Harvard epidemiologist Elvis Garcia, who told clarion It has been almost two years since “the impact of the confinement was very high and the effects will be seen little by little”. And she wasn’t wrong, apparently.

Now, a team of researchers from the University of Aberdeen in Scotland has found that people have made mistakes trying to remember the events of 2021, something similar to what It happens to people who have served a prison sentence.

“Remembering when past events occurredit gets harder as time goes on”, said Arash Sahraie, co-author of the study published in the specialized journal PLOS One,

“Also, people’s activities and emotions it can affect your perception of the passage of time”, added the scientist.

“The social isolation resulting from the Covid-19 lockdowns significantly affected activities and emotions of people and previous research has shown that the pandemic has caused distortions in people’s perception of time,” said the University of Aberdeen professor.

I study analyzed responses to a 2022 survey in which 277 participants were asked to relate the events to the years in which they occurred, from 2016 to 2022.

people were asked when major news events occurred, such as Oprah’s interview with Prince Harry and Meghan Markle or the death of George Floyd. They also completed a questionnaire about their mental health.

Although distant memories generated more errors, the researchers found the ability of people to remember was lacking the events of 2021. Some respondents even compared the events to three or four years earlier.

According to the researchers, the inability to accurately recall a timeline of events was related to reports of depression, anxiety and stressful physical and mental demands.

“As expected, participants’ recall of past events was less accurate,” Sahraie said. “However, your perception of the timing of events that occurred in 2021, a year before the survey, it was as vague as that of the events that had occurred three or four years earlier.”

In other words, many participants he had trouble remembering the timing of events that coincided with the COVID-19 lockdowns,” he added.

Researchers believe so “anchoring” life events is vital for an accurate reminder of timelines, and these have become scarce since the pandemic-related lockdowns began in 2020.

Indeed the resultsare similar to those previously reported for prisoners“, He added.

“In a landscape, if the features aren’t clearly distinguishable, it’s harder to pinpoint the objects or yourself in relation to other features,” he explained. “Restrictions imposed during the pandemic they have depleted our temporal landscapeaffecting the perception of the deadlines of events”.

“We can remember what events happened, We just don’t remember when.” hill.