Capturing Social Cues: Social Working Memory and Attentional Bias in Loneliness Among Young Adults

In 2024, the World Health Organization reported increasing loneliness among young adults worldwide. Research shows young adults who are lonely are biased towards social cues. However, the interaction between the ability to manipulate social cues, called social working memory (SWM), and attentional bias (AB) remains unexplored. The study examined the relationship between loneliness in young adults, AB towards positive, negative and neutral social scenes and SWM capacity to manipulate cues like faces, age and gaze. 159 young adults filled out informed consent, demographic details, and questionnaires about loneliness, anxiety and depression. From this, 74 participants with low or moderate anxiety and depression scores were administered a novel AB-SWM task. Results reported a significant weak negative correlation between loneliness scores and facial cue recall and a significant weak positive correlation between positive bias and facial cue recall. While loneliness and bias towards positive cues were predictors of facial cue recall, AB did not mediate the relationship between loneliness and facial cue recall. Results indicate that loneliness in individuals leads to impaired recall of certain social cues, and bias towards positive stimuli improves recall. These findings provide theoretical insights into the socio-cognitive processes of young adults who are lonely. Keywords: loneliness, social working memory, attentional bias, social cues, social cognition