Working memory, temporality of methodological conceptual forgetting and mental well-being in master's and doctoral degrees

Argota-Pérez G. · Revista Medica Electronica (2025)

Resumen

Introduction: Academic deficiencies include low conceptual retention and forgetting information, which affects professional satisfaction. Objective: To describe working memory, temporality of methodological conceptual forgetting, and mental well-being in master's and doctoral students of public universities in Peru. Methods: The study was conducted between April and September 2024. A stratified probabilistic sampling method was applied, with 111 master's students and 62 doctoral students. The groups considered included students with completed theses, those with ongoing theses, and those without research topics. Conceptual retention capacity, forgetting rate and effectiveness in the application of methodological concepts were measured. Multiple mean comparisons were performed using the Tukey HSD test. The results were significant when p<0.05. Results: Doctoral students with completed theses achieved an immediate recall of 38.70 %, long-term retention of 70.83 %, and an average score in sequencing tasks of 16.46±0.20. In contrast, master's students with completed theses recorded 28.83 %, 71.88 %, and 16.00±0.21, respectively. Those students with theses in progress or without developed topics reported lower values, with significant differences (p<0.05). More than 20 % of the students forgot concepts after 14 days. The highest mental well-being corresponded to doctoral students with completed theses, according to the application of concepts (65 %) and a lower number of errors = 8. Conclusions: Students with completed theses presented better working memory, greater conceptual retention, and lower rate of forgetfulness, which improved their mental well-being by reducing errors in sequential tasks.