Cognitive Processes and the Impact of Stress upon Doctoral Students: Practical Applications for Doctoral Programs

Abstract

Doctoral-level graduate training is, by definition, very demanding from a cognitive perspective. As graduate students adjust to the significant academic demands of doctoral education, they are often in a period of financial, personal, and relational flux or challenge. In addition to what are likely more obvious social and emotional effects, cognitive performance may be impacted by these stressors and negatively impact doctoral training. In terms of cognitive functioning, these stressors most clearly affect working memory—the limited capacity to hold and engage units of information or concepts in one’s active thought. This foundational functional capacity is utilized in complex thought, problem solving, and learning/memory. Under stress, working memory might be over-utilized and then may become degraded during these times of distress, negatively impacting performance in the doctoral program. In these instances of stress, the limited capacity of working memory becomes allocated to the stressors rather than to the complex and high-level thinking of doctoral training and education. Graduate program directors must therefore consider not only how best to mitigate the risks of psychological and social difficulties related to these stressors, but also work to minimize the impact of these stressors upon cognitive performance. Given the potential influence upon academic and cognitive performance in graduate studies, the impact of stressful events upon working memory and the related effects upon cognition/cognitive performance and potential interventions/recommendations to enhance graduate student performance are considered.

Keywords:

• Doctoral education
• doctoral students
• stress and cognition