Feeling low, thinking slow? Associations between situational cues, mood and cognitive function

ABSTRACT

Within-person changes in mood, which are triggered by situational cues, for example someone’s location or company, are thought to affect contemporaneous cognitive function. To test this hypothesis, data were collected over 6 months with the smartphone application (app) moo-Q that prompted users at random times to rate their mood and complete 3 short cognitive tests. Out of 24,313 people across 154 countries, who downloaded the app, 770 participants submitted 10 or more valid moo-Q responses (mean = 23; SD = 18; range 10–207). Confirming previous research, consistent patterns of association emerged for 6 different situation cues with mood and cognitive function: For example, being alone rather than with others when completing the app resulted in worse mood but better cognitive task performance. Notwithstanding, changes in mood and cognitive function were not coupled. The advantages and challenges of using smartphone technology for studying mood and cognitive function are discussed.

KEYWORDS:

• Mood
• cognitive function
• memory
• smartphone
• ecological momentary assessment
• within-person differences

Acknowledgements

I thank Hannah Bernhard, Katrina d’Apice, Yordanka Dimova, Alan Mak, Hannah Scott, and Abegail Tan for their help in developing and promoting moo-Q, and to www.psyt.co.uk for their generous and excellent technical support.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

ORCID

Sophie von Stumm http://orcid.org/0000-0002-0447-5471

Notes

1. We excluded the first assessment in this analysis, because the sample size at this time was very low (N = 51). Instead, we conducted the analysis using data from the assessment occasions 2 through 6. The reason for comparatively small N at time 1 is that most moo-Q users completed moo-Q for the first time not in response to an alert and thus, their moo-Q response was invalid and excluded (see above).

2. The category “elsewhere” was omitted from the current analyses.

Additional information

Funding

The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: The development of the iPhone app moo-Q was supported [grant number SG140924] from the British Academy/Leverhulme Small Grant Scheme. The preparation of this manuscript was supported by [grant number RFP-15-03] from the Imagination Institute (www.imagination-institute.org), funded by the John Templeton Foundation. The first author is recipient of a Jacobs Foundation Fellowship (2017–2019).