Examining the stress, depressive thoughts, and working memory capacities of the university students

Abstract

The objective of the study is to measure the capacity of the working memory, and also to investigate its relationship to life stress and depressive thoughts. The study sample consisted of 50 college students studied on Science and Art major. A cognitive task was designed to measure the working memory capacity based on the determinants found in previous research. The results indicated that there were statistically significant differences in the level of life stress events (high/low) on the task of measuring the working memory capacity. The results also showed that there were no statistically significant differences neither between genders nor between majors on the task of measuring the working memory capacity. Furthermore, the results reported that there was no statistically significant effect of the interaction of the level of life stress (high/low) and gender (male/female) on the task of measuring working memory capacity. Finally, the results reported that there were significant differences in the level of depressive thoughts (high/low) on the task of measuring working memory. The current research concludes that neither the interaction of stressful life events, gender, and academic major, nor the interaction of depressive thoughts, gender, and academic major have an effect on working memory capacity.