Pregnant women's memory problems

There are anecdotal reports of women experiencing memory problems during pregnancy and these reports have been confirmed by studies of retrospective memory, such as word-learning tasks. Researchers at Australian Catholic University looked at prospective memory in pregnant women i.e. the ability to remember to do things such as attend appointments or take medication. They compared the performances of 20 pregnant and non-pregnant women on a board game called Virtual Week, which involved remembering to carry out daily tasks, and on a task in which they were required to 'check in' with a portable device at the same time four times each day. The pregnant women were no worse at the board game but were significantly worse at the second task. This impairment remained even 13 months after giving birth although by this point the women with young children were more likely to remember later that they had forgotten to 'check in.'

You can find out more about this research at

http://bps-research-digest.blogspot.com/2008/11/pregnancy-affects-womens-memory-for.html