Ebook: Cognition and the Menstrual Cycle

This book originated in a symposium that was held at the London Conference of the British Psychological Society (BPS) in December 1988. The fact that the various contributors were able to assemble at all was very much due to the kind generosity of the Scientific Affairs Board of the BPS, which had made resources available from its Initiatives Fund to enable Barbara Sommer to travel to the United Kingdom to participate in the event. The broad continuity among the contributions to this symposium in terms of their underlying themes led us to the view that a single volume consisting of original papers by those concerned would be a timely contri­ bution to the research literature, not simply on menstruation and cognitive performance but more generally on the nature of female psychology. This was confirmed by a clear sense that in their different ways, the individual researchers involved were achieving 'genuine conceptual, theoretical, and empirical progress in this area and were generating ideas and findings that accorded well with changing views of women in psychology and cognate disciplines. We hope that the various chapters in this book convey some sense of this intellectual progress and development. JOHN T. E. RICHARDSON v Contents Preface v Contributors xi Chapter 1 The Menstrual Cycle, Cognition, and Paramenstrual Symptomatology JOHN T. E.

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The menstrual cycle is one of the very few biological pro- cesses that exhibit a virtually complete dimorphism between male and female members of the human species. By presenting the evidence related to variations in women's cognitive abilities throughout the menstrual cycle, this book makes a solid contribution to a better understanding of the differ- ences between the sexes.