Performance tests in different phases of the menstrual cycle

Abstract

Studies are reported of performance on reaction time and detection tasks during phases of the menstrual cycle. The subjects were females who complained of usually experiencing increased negative affect around the time of menstruation. At the most difficult level of task the results show evidence for a small association between actually experiencing symptoms and decrement in performance. Overall variation in performance over different phases of the cycle did not reach significance, but tended to do so with increasing difficulty of task.