Prof. Priyanka Srivastava and her students Adithya Jain and Rishabh Singhal presented two papers at the 8th Annual Conference of Cognitive Science (ACCS8 2022) from 20 – 22 January.
- Oral presentation on the paper The impact of the second wave of COVID-19 on Indian students and the mediating roles of psychological flexibility and coping strategies.
Research work as explained by the authors: To summarize, this study showed the severe impact of COVID-19 on students in India. It detected factors like length of lockdown, lack of personal space, increased fights at home, infection of self and close ones, and general worry about COVID-19 as detrimental to mental health. It also showed psychological flexibility as a resilience mechanism that mitigates this detrimental impact, while avoidant coping strategies exacerbate the impact. These results support interventions and approaches that promote flexibility, like Acceptance Commitment Therapy. Knowing the specific factors of the environment that affect mental health may also contribute to the development and testing of these approaches.
- Poster presentation on the paper The roles of trait anxiety, psychological flexibility and coping strategies on the mental health impact of COVID-19 on college students in India.
Research work as explained by the authors: This study showed the severe impact of COVID-19 amongst the students after the second wave ended, corroborating recent worldwide studies. Further, it helped to identify specific factors that result in individual differences while dealing with the pandemic’s stressors due to its uncertain nature. Predisposition to anxiety (STAI-T), among other factors, was crucial when predicting the propensity to depression, stress and anxiety; thus, such individuals could be identified early on. Health professionals can further employ approaches that promote psychological flexibility, such as Acceptance Commitment Therapy and educate about different coping styles promoting active coping.
Annual Conference of Cognitive Science (ACCS8) aimed at bringing together researchers from different scientific communities working on areas related to cognitive science. Two types of contributions were welcomed – theoretical developments arising from practical problems, and case studies where methodologies are applied. The themes broadly covered as many fields within Cognitive Science as possible and invited papers from domains as varied as computer science, signal processing, HCI, psychology, Linguistics, philosophy of mind and so on.
Conference Page: https://amrita.edu/event/accs8/