Cyclical variation in digit-span and visual-search performance in women differing in the severity of their premenstrual symptoms.
Groups of women differing in the severity of reported premenstrual symptoms were compared over two menstrual cycles on a digit-span task, a visual-search task, and a combination of the two. Neither group exhibited large performance changes during the premenstrual phase of the cycle. High-symptom women differed somewhat from low-symptom women in the effect of menstrual phase on digit-span performance, recalling slightly fewer series correctly during the premenstrual phase. The response latency of high-symptom women on the visual-search task was substantially longer than that of the low-symptom women regardless of menstrual phase. These results suggest that there may be stable differences between high-symptom and low-symptom subjects that are greater than the cyclical fluctuation within either group.
Diener
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Department of Psychology, University of Nevada, Las Vegas 89154.
Greenstein
F L
FL
Turnbough
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PD
D000328:Adult; D001288:Attention; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008597:Menstrual Cycle / Q000523:psychology*; D011939:Mental Recall; D010364:Pattern Recognition, Visual; D011293:Premenstrual Syndrome / Q000175:diagnosis / Q000523:psychology*; D012016:Reference Values; D012691:Serial Learning