Anna Soveri

Åbo Akademi University · Psychology

Vaccine hesitancy has been identified as one of the top ten threats to global health by the World Health Organization (WHO). The belief in conspiracy narratives is repeatedly discussed as a major driver of vaccine hesitancy among the general population. However, there is a lack of research investigating the role of the belief in conspiracy narrativ...

Health communicators are faced with the challenge that people can hesitate vaccines for different reasons. Our aim was to identify and describe the qualities of distinct COVID-19 and influenza vaccine-hesitancy subgroups to facilitate the development of tailored vaccine-hesitancy communication. In two studies, we used agglomerative hierarchical clu...

Introduction Physicians play a critical role in encouraging their patients to get vaccinated, in part by responding to patients’ concerns about vaccines. It is, therefore, important to understand what difficulties physicians have in dealing with different concerns they may encounter. The aim of this article was to determine physicians’ perceptions...

Research has found that vaccine-promoting messages can elicit state reactance (i.e., negative emotions in response to a perceived threat to behavioral freedom), especially among individuals with high trait reactance (i.e., proneness to experiencing reactance). This can result in a lower willingness to accept vaccines. We investigated whether inocul...

The Covid pandemic has yielded new insights into psychological vaccine acceptance factors. This knowledge serves as a basis for behavioral and communication interventions that can increase vaccination readiness for other diseases.

Anti‐science attitudes can be resilient to scientific evidence if they are rooted in psychological motives. One such motive is trait reactance, which refers to the need to react with opposition when one's freedom of choice has been threatened. In three studies, we investigated trait reactance as a psychological motivation to reject vaccination. In...

Background Healthcare professionals (HCPs) play an important role in vaccination; those with low confidence in vaccines are less likely to recommend them to their patients and to be vaccinated themselves. The study’s purpose was to adapt and validate long- and short-form versions of the International Professionals’ Vaccine Confidence and Behaviors...

Vaccine hesitancy has become a threat to public health, especially as it is a phenomenon that has also been observed among healthcare professionals. In this study, we analyzed the relationship between endorsement of complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) and vaccination attitudes and behaviors among healthcare professionals, using a cross-sec...

Mandatory vaccinations are widely debated since they restrict individuals’ autonomy in their health decisions. As healthcare professionals (HCPs) are a common target group of vaccine mandates, and also form a link between vaccination policies and the public, understanding their attitudes toward vaccine mandates is important. The present study inves...

The current study sought to determine whether public perceptions of other vaccines and diseases than COVID-19 have been impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic. We longitudinally examined whether there had been a change from before the COVID-19 pandemic to during the pandemic in: (a) influenza vaccination behaviour and intentions; (b) the perceived benef...

Individually tailored vaccine hesitancy interventions are considered auspicious for decreasing vaccine hesitancy. In two studies, we measured self-reported format preference for statistical vs. anecdotal information in vaccine hesitant individuals, and experimentally manipulated the format in which COVID-19 and influenza vaccine hesitancy intervent...

This Comment piece summarises current challenges regarding routine vaccine uptake in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic and provides recommendations on how to increase uptake. To implement these recommendations, the article points to evidence-based resources that can support health-care workers, policy makers and communicators.

This Comment piece summarises current challenges regarding routine vaccine uptake in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic and provides recommendations on how to increase uptake. To implement these recommendations, the article points to evidence-based resources that can support health care workers, policy makers and communicators.

Individually tailored vaccine hesitancy interventions are considered auspicious for decreasing vaccine hesitancy. In two studies, we measured self-reported format preference for statistical vs. anecdotal information in vaccine hesitant individuals, and experimentally manipulated the format in which COVID-19 and influenza vaccine hesitancy intervent...

Background: Vaccine confidence among health care professionals (HCPs) is a key determinant of vaccination behaviors. We validate a short-form version of the 31-item Pro-VC-Be (Health Professionals Vaccine Confidence and Behaviors) questionnaire that measures HCPs' confidence in and commitment to vaccination. Research design and methods: A cross-...

Aims Investigating attitudes towards mandatory vaccination and sanctions for vaccination refusal in an area with insufficient vaccination coverage may help health authorities to assess which strategies for increasing vaccination coverage are appropriate. This study examines attitudes to vaccine mandates and asks questions regarding what kinds of sa...

Aims: Investigating attitudes towards mandatory vaccination and sanctions for vaccination refusal in an area with insufficient vaccination coverage may help health authorities to assess which strategies for increasing vaccination coverage are appropriate. This study explores attitudes to vaccine mandates and asks questions regarding what kinds of s...

Objectives: The lack of validated instruments assessing vaccine hesitancy/confidence among health care professionals (HCPs) for themselves, and their patients led us to develop and validate the Pro-VC-Be instrument to measure vaccine confidence and other psychosocial determinants of HCPs' vaccination behavior among diverse HCPs in different countr...

The aim of the current study was to explore whether the COVID-19 pandemic has affected people’s perceptions of other vaccines and diseases than COVID-19. In two samples of Finnish adults (N = 205 in Study 1 and N = 197 in Study 2), we longitudinally investigated whether there has been a change from before the COVID-19 pandemic to during the pandemi...

The behavioral immune system is considered to be a psychological adaptation that decreases the risk of infection. Research suggests that, in the current environment, this system can produce attitudes with negative health consequences, such as increased vaccine hesitancy. In three studies, we investigated whether two facets of the behavioral immune...

Background We investigated if people’s response to the official recommendations during the COVID-19 pandemic is associated with conspiracy beliefs related to COVID-19, a distrust in the sources providing information on COVID-19, and an endorsement of complementary and alternative medicine (CAM). Methods The sample consisted of 1325 Finnish adults...

The behavioral immune system is considered to be a psychological adaptation that decreases the risk of infection. Research suggests that, in the current environment, this system can produce attitudes with negative health consequences, such as increased vaccine hesitancy. In three studies, we investigated whether two facets of the behavioral immune...

As studies indicate that people perceive COVID-19 as a threatening disease, the demand for a vaccine against the disease could be expected to be high. Vaccine safety concerns might nevertheless outweigh the perceived disease risks when an individual decides whether or not to accept the vaccine. We investigated the role of perceived risk of COVID-19...

Background: We investigated if people’s unwillingness to comply with the official recommendations during the COVID-19 pandemic is driven by conspiracy beliefs, state reactance, a distrust in information sources, and an endorsement of complementary and alternative medicine (CAM). Methods: The sample consisted of 1325 Finnish adults who filled out an...

Objective: As COVID-19 continues to spread, researchers are working to develop a safe and effective vaccine. The success of an approved vaccine in stopping or slowing the pandemic will ultimately depend on the public’s acceptance of it. As studies indicate that people perceive COVID-19 as a threatening disease, the demand for a vaccine could be exp...

The development of treatments for attention impairments is hampered by limited knowledge about the malleability of underlying neural functions. We conducted the first randomized controlled trial to determine the modulations of brain activity associated with working memory (WM) training in adults with attention‐deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD)....

Psychological assessment scales need to be psychometrically sound, but previous research on the factorial structure of one of the most common measures of trait reactance, the Hong Psychological Reactance Scale (HPRS), has provided multiple latent structures and contradicting findings, and the statistical methodology of previous research can be crit...

Objective The aim of the present study was to investigate whether anti-vaccination attitudes and behavior, and positive attitudes to complementary and alternative medicine (CAM), are driven by trait reactance and a distrust in medical doctors. Methods The sample consisted of 770 Finnish parents who filled out an online survey. Structural equation...

Research on students suggests that repeated feedback in simulated investigative interviews with avatars (computerized children) improves the quality of the interviews conducted in this simulated environment. It remains unclear whether also professional groups (psychologists) benefit from the training and if the effects obtained in the simulated int...

The putative bilingual executive advantage has been argued to stem from lifelong experience with executively demanding language behaviors, such as switching between the two languages. However, studies testing for possible associations between language switching frequency and EF in bilinguals have yielded inconsistent results. One reason for this co...

Information and assurance from healthcare workers (HCWs) is reported by laypeople as a key factor in their decision to get vaccinated. However, previous research has shown that, as in the general population, hesitancy towards vaccines exists among HCWs as well. Previous studies further suggest that HCWs with a higher confidence in vaccinations and...

Cognitive mechanisms underlying the limited transfer effects of working memory (WM) training remain poorly understood. We tested in detail the Strategy Mediation hypothesis, according to which WM training generates task-specific strategies that facilitate performance on the trained task and its untrained variants. This large-scale pre-registered ra...

The brain mechanisms of working memory (WM) training in humans remain unclear. Here we examined how WM updating training modulates a cascade of event-related potentials (ERPs) elicited at different processing stages. We hypothesized that WM updating training results to decreases in the early responses reflecting stimulus selection and response prep...

Studies have indicated that video gaming is positively associated with cognitive performance in select cognitive domains, but the magnitudes of these associations have been called into question, as they have frequently been based on extreme groups analyses that have compared video gamers with non-gamers. When including the whole range of participan...

Clinical anxiety and acute stress caused by major life events have well-documented detrimental effects on cognitive processes, such as working memory (WM). However, less is known about the relationships of state anxiety or everyday stress with WM performance in non-clinical populations. We investigated the associations between these two factors and...

Regression plots from Model 2 with STAI-6 summative score as the predictor (x-axis) and the working memory composite scores (n-back, verbal, visual; y-axis) as dependent measures.

Regression plots from Model 1 with age as the predictor (x-axis) and the working memory composite scores (n-back, verbal, visual; y-axis) as dependent measures.

Zero-order correlations between the WM tasks.

The bilingual executive advantage (BEA) hypothesis has attracted considerable research interest, but the findings are inconclusive. We addressed this issue in the domain of working memory (WM), as more complex WM tasks have been underrepresented in the previous literature. First, we compared early and late bilingual vs. monolingual WM performance....

Data used for the analysis. (RAR)

Previous studies that have investigated associations between working memory (WM) and the Big Five personality traits have yielded mixed results, with some finding statistically significant associations while others have not. The aim of the current study was twofold. First, we systematically reviewed previous studies on WM-Big Five associations. Sec...

Due to enduring experience of managing two languages, bilinguals have been argued to develop superior executive functioning compared to monolinguals. Despite extensive investigation, there is, however, no consensus regarding the existence of such a bilingual advantage. Here we synthesized comparisons of bilinguals’ and monolinguals’ performance in...

Because of enduring experience of managing two languages, bilinguals have been argued to develop superior executive functioning compared with monolinguals. Despite extensive investigation, there is, however, no consensus regarding the existence of such a bilingual advantage. Here we synthesized comparisons of bilinguals’ and monolinguals’ performan...

The efficacy of working memory (WM) training has been a controversial and hotly debated issue during the last years, and despite a large number of training studies and several meta-analyses, the matter has not yet been solved. We conducted a multi-level meta-analysis on the cognitive transfer effects in healthy adults who have been administered WM...

Although working memory (WM) is amongst the most studied neurocognitive functions, temporal patterns of its component processes are not fully understood. We examined the neural underpinnings of active maintenance and interference management in the n-back task by manipulating load (1-back vs 3-back) and including so-called lure stimuli. ERPs of 27 y...

Previous work demonstrates that working-memory (WM) updating training results in improved performance on a letter-memory criterion task, transfers to an untrained n-back task, and increases striatal dopamine (DA) activity during the criterion task. Here, we sought to replicate and extend these findings by also examining neurochemical correlates of...

During the past decades, working memory (WM) training has attracted considerable research attention, but its transfer to untrained tasks is still controversial. In a randomized controlled trial, we investigated the possible transfer effects of a novel sentence-level WM training regime. Sixty-eight healthy Finnish adults were randomized into either...

Working memory (WM) is one of the most studied cognitive constructs in psychology, because of its relevance to human performance, including language processing. When measuring verbal WM for sentences, the reading span task is the most widely used WM measure for this purpose. However, comparable sentence-level updating tasks are missing. Hence, we s...

Working memory (WM) is a key cognitive system that is strongly related to other cognitive domains and relevant for everyday life. However, the structure of WM is yet to be determined. A number of WM models have been put forth especially by factor analytical studies. In broad terms, these models vary by their emphasis on WM contents (e.g., visuospat...

Our ability to flexibly shift between tasks or task sets declines in older age. As this decline may have adverse effects on everyday life of elderly people, it is of interest to study whether set shifting ability can be trained, and if training effects generalize to other cognitive tasks. Here, we report a randomized controlled trial where healthy...

We examined the relationship between self-reported everyday language switching experience and the performance of early bilinguals in tasks measuring different executive functions. Our participants were Finnish–Swedish early bilinguals, aged 16–41 years (N = 66, Experiment 1) and 18–69 years (N = 111, Experiment 2). An earlier study using a sample f...

The efficacy of working memory (WM) training has been a controversial and hotly debated issue during the past years. Despite a large number of training studies and several meta-analyses, the matter has not yet been solved. We conducted a multi-level meta-analysis on the cognitive transfer effects in healthy adults who have been administered WM upda...

In a randomized controlled trial, we investigated the pattern of near transfer effects of working memory (WM) training with an adaptive auditory-visuospatial dual n-back training task in healthy young adults. The results revealed significant task-specific transfer to an untrained single n-back task, and more general near transfer to a WM updating c...

Executive tasks are important instruments for neuropsychological and cognitive research, but only a limited number of studies have investigated the test–retest reliability of these tasks. Such information is needed for optimizing task usage, for example, in longitudinal and intervention studies. In this study with healthy adults, we investigated th...

The aim of the present study was to extend the current understanding of the relationship between executive functions and violent crime in women. This was done by investigating whether set-shifting ability differentiated between subgroups of female violent offenders, with regard to criminal diversity and frequency of violent offenses. The study was...

Facilitation of general cognitive capacities such as executive functions through training has stirred considerable research interest during the last decade. Recently we demonstrated that training of auditory attention with forced attention dichotic listening not only facilitated that performance but also generalized to an untrained attentional task...

During the past decade, working memory training has attracted much interest. However, the training outcomes have varied between studies and methodological problems have hampered the interpretation of results. The current study examined transfer after working memory updating training by employing an extensive battery of pre-post cognitive measures w...

The present study investigated the effect of bilingualism on the two widely used developmental neuropsychological test batteries Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children - Fourth Edition (WISC-IV) and A Developmental Neuropsychological Assessment, Second Edition (NEPSY-II) in children. The sample consisted of 100 Finland-Swedish children in two age...

The very few cognitive training studies targeting an important executive function, set shifting, have reported performance improvements that also generalized to untrained tasks. The present randomized controlled trial extends set shifting training research by comparing previously used cued training with uncued training. A computerized adaptation of...

We studied the effects of training on auditory attention in healthy adults with a speech perception task involving dichotically presented syllables. Training involved bottom-up manipulation (facilitating responses from the harder-to-report left ear through a decrease of right-ear stimulus intensity), top-down manipulation (focusing attention on the...

BACKGROUND: Language performance in aphasia can vary depending on several variables such as stimulus characteristics and task demands. This study focuses on the degree of verbal working memory (WM) load inherent in the language task and how this variable affects language performance by individuals with aphasia. AIMS: The first aim was to identify t...

Updating of working memory has been associated with striato-frontal brain regions and phasic dopaminergic neurotransmission. We assessed raclopride binding to striatal dopamine (DA) D2 receptors during a letter-updating task and a control condition before and after 5 weeks of updating training. Results showed that updating affected DA activity befo...

Several studies have suggested a bilingual advantage in executive functions, presumably due to bilinguals’ massive practice with language switching that requires executive resources, but the results are still somewhat controversial. Previous studies are also plagued by the inherent limitations of a natural groups design where the participant groups...

It has been claimed that due to their experience in controlling two languages, bilinguals exceed monolinguals in certain executive functions, especially inhibition of task-irrelevant stimuli. Here we investigated the effects of bilingualism on an executive phonological task, namely the forced-attention dichotic listening task with syllabic stimuli....

We investigated the neural correlates of morphological processing in two structurally different languages within the same individuals. An interesting contrast is provided by Finnish and Swedish where most inflected Finnish nouns tend to show a processing cost (i.e., longer reaction times and higher error rates) compared to monomorphemic nouns, whil...

Purpose To explore the existence of genetic effects as well as the interaction between potential genetic effects and a voice-demanding occupation on dysphonia. Method One thousand seven hundred and twenty-eight Finnish twins (555 male; 1,173 female) born between 1961 and 1989 completed a questionnaire concerning vocal symptoms and occupation. The...

The aims of the present study were to investigate the effects of word frequency on morphological processing of inflected words in Finnish, and to re-test previous results obtained for high frequency inflected words in Finnish which suggest that inflected words of high frequency might have full-form representations in the mental lexicon. Our results...