Story Retelling and Verbal Working Memory in Young Adults With a History of COVID-19: Cross-Sectional Study

The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic has primarily been studied in the context of language delays or developmental disorders in infants and children. However, the effects on young adults have received less attention. COVID-19 not only affects physical health but also cognitive and language functions, which is an emerging area of research. While previous studies have focused on developmental stages, the effects of COVID-19 on the language abilities of healthy young adults remain underexplored. This study aimed to investigate the impact of COVID-19 on the spoken language, particularly in story retelling and working memory, in young adults.

This study aimed to investigate the effects of COVID-19 on memory-based story retelling and verbal working memory in young adults. Specifically, it examined whether there were group differences in story retelling and working memory performance between individuals with and those without a history of COVID-19, and whether verbal working memory predicted story retelling outcomes.

The study involved 79 young adult participants, of whom 39 were in the non-COVID-19 group and 40 were in the COVID-19 group. Participants completed the Story Retelling Procedure (SRP) and a verbal working memory task. Story retelling performance was quantified using information units per minute (IUs/min), a measure of informativeness in story retelling. Working memory was assessed using the Alphabet Span Test.

Participants with COVID-19 produced fewer information units per minute (mean 0.53, SD 0.21) than those without COVID-19 (mean 0.63, SD 0.24; P=.049). No significant group differences were found in verbal working memory performance (P=.20). However, regression analysis showed that verbal working memory significantly predicted story retelling performance (R²=.064, P=.02), suggesting that individual differences in working memory capacity may contribute to discourse informativeness, regardless of COVID-19 history.

Young adults with a history of COVID-19 exhibited reduced story retelling performance compared to those without a history of infection. In contrast, no significant differences were observed in verbal working memory performance between groups. Furthermore, verbal working memory scores significantly predicted story retelling performance, suggesting a functional link between these cognitive-linguistic domains. These findings suggest that story retelling performance may serve as a sensitive indicator of post-COVID-19 cognitive-linguistic changes in young adults.