---
title: Do women with severe premenstrual symptoms have different mental performance during their cycle?
description: Women with severe symptoms had slower thinking and response times overall, but neither group showed large changes in mental performance related to their menst
url: https://niyora.com/research/papers/cyclical-variation-in-digit-span-and-visual-search-performance-in-women-1992/
---

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- Do women with severe premenstrual symptoms have different mental performance during their cycle?

Study, 1992

# Do women with severe premenstrual symptoms have different mental performance during their cycle?

Women with severe symptoms had slower thinking and response times overall, but neither group showed large changes in mental performance related to their menstrual phase.

 Early or limited evidence

Women differing in severity of reported premenstrual symptoms

## What they did

Two groups of women, one with high premenstrual symptoms and one with low premenstrual symptoms, completed memory and visual search tasks over two menstrual cycles. Tests were done during the premenstrual phase and other phases to see if performance changed with the cycle.

## What they found

Women with high-severity symptoms recalled slightly fewer items on the memory task during the premenstrual phase compared to low-symptom women. Women with high-severity symptoms had substantially longer response times on the visual search task regardless of menstrual phase. Overall, the differences between the high and low symptom groups were larger than any changes within each group across different menstrual phases.

## What it means for you

Women with severe premenstrual symptoms may have slower thinking and response times compared to women with mild symptoms, but this appears to be a stable trait rather than something that changes with the menstrual cycle. The slowness may relate to having severe symptoms rather than to hormonal changes. The main limit is that exact sample sizes are not reported.

2 cycles

duration of testing

## About the study

Original title Cyclical variation in digit-span and visual-search performance in women differing in the severity of their premenstrual symptoms Authors Diener D, Greenstein FL, Turnbough PD Journal Perceptual and motor skills Year 1992 Study design Study Read the paper [doi.org/10.2466/pms.1992.74.1.67](https://doi.org/10.2466/pms.1992.74.1.67)

## Topics

[Premenstrual syndrome (PMS)](https://niyora.com/research/topics/condition-pms/)[Cognition, concentration and memory](https://niyora.com/research/topics/symptom-cognition/)

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