Psychology

During pregnancy women undergo many changes inside their body as the new baby takes its form within the mothers body. One such change associated with pregnancy is change in memory status which suffers loss according to some researchers. This controversy forms the basis of this research with the hypothesis of this research study being that cognitive performance, especially working memory, is indeed impaired during pregnancy and the postpartum period. The data was collected from three groups of women Women who were primigravida, primiparous, and who had never been pregnant. The participants of the study were tested on their working memory and answered questions about their levels of absentmindedness, quality of sleep and stress. 

On analysis it was found that the primigravida and primiparous women had poorer results on the objective working memory test when compared to the control group and they were more absentminded, had a poorer quality of sleep and were more stressed.  When comparing the primigravida and primiparous groups to one another, the primiparous women had poorer results on the working memory test, but were less absentminded, had a poorer quality of sleep, yet an equal stress level.

Introduction
During pregnancy women undergo many changes inside their body as the new baby takes its form within the mothers body. One such change associated with pregnancy is change in memory status which suffers loss according to some researchers. However there is a controversy in this belief which has been reported in the press this year that whether or not there is such a decrease in some aspects of cognitive functioning during pregnancy. This controversy forms the basis of this research with the hypothesis of this research study being that cognitive performance, especially working memory, is indeed impaired during pregnancy and the postpartum period. This study for confirmation of our hypothesis shall play a significant role in creating awareness among pregnant women regarding their condition during pregnancy and may help set their mind at ease knowing this deficiency that they are experiencing is part of being pregnant and not something permanent.

Method
The full details of the Method were not required for this assignment. In summary, the participants were 60 volunteer women who responded to an advertisement. Of these, 20 were 6-7 months pregnant with their first child, 20 were 2-3 months postpartum with their first child, and 20 had never been pregnant. The mean ages in years for each group (SDs in parentheses) were 28.5 (SD  3.1),   29.6 (SD  3.4), and 27.3 (SD  3.9).

The ethical procedures for research with human participants were fully implemented. Subjects first gave details of their age and then took the backward digit component of the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale.  Next, participants completed the three questions from the Absentmindedness subscale of the Short Inventory of Memory Experiences scale reporting on their level of absentmindedness over the past month (using a scale that ranged from 1 never to 7 always).  Participants then rated the quality of their sleep over the past month on a scale of 1 (I sleep very well) to 5 (I sleep very badly).  Finally, participants rated their level of stress over the past month as either (a) Not-at-all-stressed, or (b) Somewhat-or-very-stressed).

Results
Very interesting results were generated after applying the testing methods to the data and following are the important points that have been found

The primigravida group, women who were pregnant with their first child, and the primiparous women, those who had given birth to their first child, both had poor results on their backward digit component of the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale when compared to the control group that is, those women who had never been pregnant (Table1 in Appendix).

In addition, the primigravida and primiparous groups both reported that they were more absentminded, had a poorer quality of sleep and were more stressed (Table 2 in Appendix). 

When comparing the primigravida and primiparous groups to each other (Table3 in Appendix) , it was determined that the primiparous women fared worse on the backward digit component of the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale, but were less absentminded, had a poorer quality of sleep, yet an equal stress level.

Discussion
The analysis of results showed that the primigravida and primiparous groups had poorer results on their digit span component of the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale (mean  5, STD  1.1 mean 4.85, STD  1.0) in comparison to the control group (mean  5.15, STD  1.2), with the primiparous women having the worst score.  This, therefore, seems to substantiate the hypothesis that women when pregnant and postpartum are more forgetful, when compared to other times in their lifespan.

Janes et al. emphasized on the importance of research to determine the impairment of working memory of a pregnant woman as the authors reported in 1999 there were no research conducted to compare the working memory of pregnant and postpartum women with that of a control group.  They felt that it was important as the working memory capacity has a parallel relationship with performing concurrent tasks simultaneously and therefore helps in determining how successful one shall be to manage the activities of daily living, which many times involves handling of many tasks concurrently.

Janes et al asserted that an increased forgetfulness in some areas could either result from a decreased capacity in the working memory or an increase in load on the memory of the pregnant women.  This might explain why the primiparous group has the lowest score on the digit span component of the Intelligence Scale as these women now have a newborn infant to attend to, they have additional tasks at their hand that had to be handled concurrently, and this put an increased load on their memory (Janes et al, 1999, pgs. 80-87).

Viewing the results in the light of the above research it becomes clear that the primigravida and primiparous groups were more absentminded (mean  4.46, STD  1.4 mean  4.44, STD  1.4) than women who had never been pregnant (mean  3.29, STD  1.0), with the first two groups now having to handle more tasks concurrently as well as having an increased burden on their memory.  Yet, the primiparous group was less absentminded than the primigravida one.  Some studies report that the increased absentmindedness experienced during pregnancy is associated with a temporary overload of the working memory capacity.  Indeed, the temporary overload that is hypothesized by some is in accordance with the previous discussion on working memory, and is also in agreement with the results of this research study.  Both primigravida and primiparous groups are more absentminded, are more forgetful, due to an increased load on their working memory capacity.  But the primiparous women, no longer pregnant are slowly returning to levels that will match that of the control group (Casey, 2000).

Another important factor that affects the working memory is the sleep pattern. Both the primigravida and primiparous groups had a poorer quality of sleep (mean  3.65, STD  1.2 mean  3.85, STD  1.0) as compared to the control group of women who had never been pregnant (mean  2.55, STD  1.1).  The changes observed in memory may, therefore, be related to the poorer quality of sleep. Poor sleeping pattern is most likely in women that are six to seven months pregnant undergoing all the pregnancy related anatomical and hormonal changes and in women who have recently given birth and are caring for a two- or three-month old infant. Therefore it is evident that they would have poorer quality of sleep as compared to women who are neither pregnant nor caring for a child.  Similarly both the primigravida and primiparous groups had a higher stress level (mean for both at 70) when compared to the control group (mean at 25), which is also an important factor that can also affect memory working.

Crawly et al (2008) explains that there are actually several potential reasons why pregnancy results in changes in cognition these being the changing hormonal levels of progesterone, estrogen and cortisol. All these hormonal changes during pregnancy have been shown to affect cognition, although the evidence is not consistent stress, depression and anxiety as well as the demands of adjusting to a major transition also play a major role in memory impairment during pregnancy.

Hence from the above literature review it is clearly evident that cognitive abilities and memory is indeed adversely affected during the time of pregnancy and postpartum.  And this hypothesis has been substantiated by the research results which was the purpose of this paper. Some interesting facts to know at this time is that although memory impairments do occur in women during pregnancy and post partum, significant improvement is observed after some time and the working memory may return to its normal functioning once the period of stress and sleepless nights are gone. Also, the degree of impairment is dependent on many factors and may vary among person to person depending on factors like problems experienced during pregnancy or sleep routines of infants for recent mothers. The more problems associated with pregnancy and new motherhood more shall be the load on memory resulting in memory loss. Future directions in this study can include research on the diversity of memory loss experienced by the pregnant women during and after their pregnancy and the extent to which this memory loss hinders women in performing their daily chores. These studies would help women get acquainted with a major problem of memory loss associated with their pregnant condition.