The effect of menstrual cycle on attentional control

目标识别受到显著干扰物的影响。有人认为，这种损害是由注意力从任务相关位置到干扰物（注意捕获）的时间或空间偏差引起的。本研究探讨了月经周期对女性在月经周期的不同阶段（MP，FP和LP）的注意捕获的影响。我们收集了每个实验阶段女性受试者的唾液样本，以分析FP，LP和MP中的雌二醇和孕酮浓度。结果表明，在时间和空间搜索任务中，注意捕获都发生了显著的变化。女性的注意力捕捉仅在时间搜索任务中比男性更深刻。这表明，当女性在快速的非目标流中寻找目标时，她们对一个突出但与任务无关的项目比男性更敏感。重要的是，注意力捕获的大小不受测量周期的影响。这些结果表明，在时间搜索任务中注意捕获的性别差异是生理差异而不是性激素的结果。

Target identification is impaired by a salient distractor. It has been suggested that this impairment is caused by the temporal or spatial deviation of attentional focus from a task-relevant location to the distractor (attentional capture). The present study examined the effect of menstrual cycle on attentional capture for women across different phases of their menstrual cycle (the MP, FP, and LP). We collected saliva samples from women subjects for each experimental session to analyze estradiol and progesterone concentrations in the FP, LP and MP. The results indicate that robust attentional capture occurred in temporal and spatial search tasks. Attentional capture was more profound for women than men only in the temporal search task. This suggests that women are more sensitive to a salient but task-irrelevant item than men when they are searching for a target embedded among a rapid stream of nontargets. Importantly, the magnitude of attentional capture was unaffected by the metrual cycle. Theses results suggest that sex differences in attentional capture in the temporal search task result from physiological differences rather than sex hormones.