1 Perceived Cognitive Impairment in High School Students in the United States During the COVID-19 Pandemic
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Objective: The Youth Risk Behavior Survey (YRBS), conducted by the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in 2019, revealed that a large percentage of boys (30%) and girls (45%) reported serious difficulty concentrating, remembering, or making decisions as a result of a physical, mental, or emotional problem. In 2021, the CDC conducted the Adolescent Behaviors and Experiences Survey (ABES). The ABES included similar methodology and content as the YRBS. This study analyzed ABES data to examine correlates of perceived cognitive impairment among high school students in the United States during the COVID-19 pandemic. Participants and Methods: The ABES was a one-time, online survey that was conducted to assess and evaluate the challenges that high-school aged youth experienced during the COVID-19 pandemic. Students’ perceived cognitive impairment was assessed using the same question used in the 2019 YRBS: 'Because of a physical, mental, or emotional problem, do you have serious difficulty concentrating, remembering, or making decisions?' Response options were binary: 'Yes’ or 'No.' The students’ responses were evaluated in relation to nine adversity, mental health, and lifestyle variables. Results: Participants were 6,992 students, age 14 to 18, with 3,294 boys (47%) and 3,698 girls (53%). A large proportion endorsed experiencing serious difficulties concentrating, remembering, and making decisions (45%). Girls (56%) were significantly more likely to endorse perceived cognitive impairment compared to boys (33%) [X2(1)=392.55, p<.001; OR=2.66, 95% CI=2.41-2.93]. Youth who reported that their mental health was poor most of the time or always were very likely to report perceived cognitive impairment (boys: 67%; girls: 81%). Binary logistic regressions were used to examine the associations between perceived cognitive impairment, adversity, and lifestyle variables while controlling for mental health. These analyses were conducted separately for boys [X2(9)=596.70, p<.001; Nagelkerke R2=.24] and girls [x2(9)=883.35, p<.001; Nagelkerke R2=.30]. After controlling for current mental health, significant independent predicters of cognitive problems in boys and girls included: a lifetime history of discrimination based on race or ethnicity, lifetime history of being sexually assaulted or abused, lifetime history of using illicit drugs, being bullied in the past year, current marijuana use, and getting insufficient sleep (5 of fewer hours per night). Participation in sports and exercising regularly were both independently associated with lower rates of cognitive impairment. Conclusions: Perceived cognitive impairment was endorsed by a strikingly high percentage of high school students in 2021 during the COVID-19 pandemic. More than half of high school aged girls and one third of boys reported having serious difficulty concentrating, remembering, and making decisions. These rates are considerably higher than in 2019. Current mental health, unfair treatment because of race or ethnicity, being sexually assaulted, being bullied, drug use, and insufficient sleep were associated with perceived cognitive impairment. Indicators of a physically active lifestyle (participation in sports and exercising regularly) were associated with lower rates of cognitive problems.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.003 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".