Busyness and Cognition in Undergraduate Students: End-of-Semester versus Beginning-of-Semester Cognitive Performance

Simple item page
dc.contributor.advisorSara B. Festini
dc.contributor.authorMryczko, Danusia
dc.contributor.authorBrown, Tina
dc.date.accessioned2023-01-13T15:14:36Z
dc.date.available2023-01-13T15:14:36Z
dc.date.issued2022-12
dc.descriptionRecommended citation: Mryczko, Danusia, and Tina Brown. "Busyness and Cognition in Undergraduate Students: End-of-Semester versus Beginning-of-Semester Cognitive Performance." Acta Spartae, 2022. https://doi.org/10.48497/MR67-6D10en_US
dc.description.abstractStudents frequently report feeling more stress at the end-of-the-semester versus the beginning-of-the-semester (Kofman et al., 2006). Whether this results in worse cognition has not been thoroughly investigated. The current study measured three types of cognition, including long-term memory, working memory, and executive functioning. We assessed whether undergraduates’ stress and busyness levels and cognitive performance was different between the end of the Fall 2020 and beginning of the Spring 2021 semester. Contrary to the hypotheses, no significant point-in-semester differences were found in undergraduates’ busyness or stress levels at the beginning versus end of the semester. Mixed results were observed for cognitive performance, such that no significant differences were found for picture recall, word recall, picture recognition or letter number sequencing. Performance on the verbal fluency category task and the backward digit span task were found to approach significance, with marginally better performance at the end of the semester. Finally, word recognition was significantly better at the end of the semester, whereas verbal fluency, given a letter cue, was significantly worse at the end of the semester. Therefore, given the lack of observed busyness and stress differences, it is unlikely that busyness and stress are driving differences in students’ cognition. Future research is needed to determine if the observed cognitive differences are reliable and to assess additional mechanisms.en_US
dc.identifier.citationMryczko, Danusia, and Tina Brown. "Busyness and Cognition in Undergraduate Students: End-of-Semester versus Beginning-of-Semester Cognitive Performance." Acta Spartae, 2022. https://doi.org/10.48497/MR67-6D10en_US
dc.identifier.doihttps://doi.org/10.48497/MR67-6D10
dc.identifier.urihttp://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11868/3878
dc.language.isoen_USen_US
dc.publisherDepartment of Psychology, University of Tampaen_US
dc.relation.ispartofseriesActa Spartae
dc.subjectCognitionen_US
dc.subjectCollege studentsen_US
dc.subjectUndergraduate studentsen_US
dc.subjectStressen_US
dc.subjectPerformanceen_US
dc.titleBusyness and Cognition in Undergraduate Students: End-of-Semester versus Beginning-of-Semester Cognitive Performanceen_US
dc.typeArticleen_US

Files

Original bundle
Now showing 1 - 1 of 1
Thumbnail Image
Name:
MRYCZKO_AS_2022_A.pdf
Size:
192.99 KB
Format:
Adobe Portable Document Format
Description:
Article
Download

Collections

Volume 6, No. 1, 2022