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2024-11-11

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Women perform better at visiospatial and anticipatory processess when menstruating (www.sciencedirect.com)

submitted 7 months ago by Streetlights to c/science

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There was no group difference in reaction times and accuracy between males and females (using contraception and not). However, within subject analyses revealed that regularly menstruating females performed better during menstruation compared to being in any other phase, with faster reaction times (10ms c.ca, p < .01), fewer errors (p < .05) and lower dispersion intra-individual variability (p < .05). In contrast they exhibited slower reaction times (10ms c.ca, p < .01) and poorer timing anticipation (p < .01) in the luteal phase, and more errors in the predicted ovulatory phase (p < .01). Self-reported mood, cognitive and physical symptoms were all worst during menstruation (p < .01), and a significant proportion of females felt that their symptoms were negatively affecting their cognitive performance during menstruation on testing day, which was incongruent with their actual performance.

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[–] ChihuahuaOfDoom 10 points 7 months ago (2 children)

That's interesting but what was the point of the study?

[–] Streetlights 20 points 7 months ago (3 children)

The implications for female sports seem quite apparent.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 7 months ago

As well as vampire slaying. Cramps plus heightened senses may save Donald Sutherland next time.

[–] ChihuahuaOfDoom 7 points 7 months ago

Ok, fair point, I certainly wasn't thinking of that angle.

[–] victorz 4 points 7 months ago

Interesting. Other factors should be considered as well, such as the fact that many women feel "icky" and bothered when on their period. So that might be still a net negative.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 7 months ago

Information

[–] Shou 9 points 7 months ago

Interesting. For memory tasks it seems to be the opposite. Worse during the luteal phase.

[+] [email protected] -8 points 7 months ago (1 children)

After seeing the most recent münecat video I don’t believe research like this anymore.

[–] Streetlights 6 points 7 months ago (1 children)

I am not familiar with that individual, I assume you don't mean the musician on YouTube that Google found for me?

[–] [email protected] -1 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (1 children)

https://youtu.be/31e0RcImReY?si=18IbWnHxRGAfticv

From the title it might not sound super related, but she goes super in depth on how these intelligence researches usually are extremely problematic. As in literally telling women that women did better in these tests made them perform as well or better than men in typically “male intelligence areas”. We don’t really understand intelligence, and how it develops, and how to measure it.

So ascribing higher or lower intelligence in certain fields to certain groups just doesn’t work. Irregardless for how statistically sound it might be. We just don’t understand the parameters around it well enough to control for it.

[–] Streetlights 12 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

Well this paper isn't about intelligence or psychology, it's about physiology. Reaction times and rhythmic anticipation tests are all quite well-grounded and established tests.

Secondly, I've had a brief scan of that 3.5hr long video and dipped in and out of a few places are familiar to me. Straight away I notice she's reading out the conclusions from the Anderson paper on Hunter-Gatherers that came out last year (to huge media attention) but which was not well received by anthropologists who went through the stats and found the whole thing to be a biased mess (see: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1090513824000497?dgcid=author). It would be unfair to blame the original authors since they were all (and I believe still are) undergraduates and so the PI should've been more rigorous. Then I briefly dipped into her 'debunking' of the selfish gene where she opens with the astonishing take that bipedism isn't a heritable trait...this is not the voice of an expert and there are better critiques of the shortcomings in evopsych out there.