Assessment of Stress, Attention and Memory in High School Students in Latacunga, Ecuador: A cross-sectional survey
Abstract
Stress is the side effect of development. Nowadays school going children also had stress and it’s after effects. So this research was carried out in order to evaluate indicators of stress level (stress test), attention (Toulouse-Pièron test), immediate memory (word list test) and working memory (reverse order digit test), to a group of 40 students of the school whose age was between 15 and 17 year. Survey done on first of April in the International Baccalaureate level of the Latacunga city, Cotopaxi province, Republic of Ecuador. The perceptual and attention testing Toluuse-Pièron for additions and omissions plus errors did not throw significant differences between gender; but they behaved over 20 % of the hits, which showed a lack of deep concentration and attention over time. The stress test showed that females were more stressed in relation to males; however, for the word test and the reverse-order digits, no significant differences between the genders were found. A nonlinear (polynomial) relationship was found between the stress of the students and the memory. So it can be concluded that females were significantly more stressed than males whereas regarding memory there was no significant difference in both the sexes. It was also revealed that there was no linear relation between stress and memory.
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Introduction
Stress is one of the most common problems afflicting the current population; its presence alters numerous physiological processes and normal behavioral patterns of the individual. In humans and experimental models in non-human rodents and primates, stress has been shown to affect learning and memory, alter normal sleep patterns, contribute to the etiology and exacerbation of diseases and relate to the onset and maintenance of addictive behaviors. 1
The academic stress2,3 in the university context is considered as the impact that the student can be produce by its organizational environment. In this case of the university, it is considered that the academic stress is generated from the demands of the academic environment, without having to intervene in a significant way external aspects to the academic life.
It is reasonable to suppose that many of the demands, conflicts, activities and events involved in the academic life provoke stress, negatively affecting the health, well-being and in the academic performance of the students. In a study,4 author himself defines four groups of relevant variables that explain the academic stress: the academic stressors, the student's experience, the effects and consequences of academic stress and the modulating or moderator variables. 4
Conclusion
It can be concluded from this present study that females were significantly more stressed than males whereas immediate memory and the working memory were without significant difference in both the sexes. It was also revealed that there was no linear relation between stress and memory.