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Weather on the Mind: An Examination of the Relationship between Weather and Cognition

Poster Session A - Saturday, March 7, 3:00 – 5:00 pm, Fairview/Kitsilano Ballrooms

Gloria Gu¹, Todd Handy²; ¹University of British Columbia

Past research has found that chronic heat exposure negatively impacts cognition in older adults (Keller et al., 2005; Qian et al., 2014; Laurent et al., 2018). However, it remains unclear how smaller, day-to-day fluctuations in weather might influence everyday cognition in younger adults. The present project aims to investigate the extent to which daily weather variability affects daily cognitive variability in young populations. We are conducting a correlational, between-group study with undergraduate students examining relationships among precipitation, sunlight, temperature, and changes in executive function. Each participant completes a backward digit span task and a questionnaire assessing subjective ratings of their executive function as measures of cognition. Weather data are collected from a University of British Columbia-run weather station next to the University of British Columbia psychology building. We will analyze relationships between cognition and weather variables using multiple regression. We hypothesize that 1) higher temperatures are correlated with worse executive function, 2) more precipitation correlates with lower executive function, and 3) more sunlight correlates with better executive function. This study has three major implications. First, greater cognitive variability is often associated with worse cognitive outcomes in older adults (Gamaldo, 2015), suggesting that studying daily variability can help predict long-term cognitive change. Second, the study extends Gamaldo’s (2015) findings by examining whether cognitive variability can also predict cognitive outcomes in younger, cognitively healthy populations. Finally, understanding these relationships in young populations may help identify early markers of individual differences in cognitive stability that could later indicate cognitive vulnerability in aging.

Topic Area: EXECUTIVE PROCESSES: Other