ABSTRACT
Anecdotes such as the one quoted above are common in discussions with women about the experience of pregnancy. Many women report that during pregnancy they suffer episodes of forgetfulness, dif®culty in concentration or planning, and making errors in tasks they were previously able to accomplish with ease. The prevalence of accounts of this type and the repetition of these accounts by midwives, other health professionals and the media have led to a general belief that women are less cognitively able during pregnancy. Such experience has been labelled, in the psychology literature, cognitive failure (Broadbent et al., 1982). On the face of it, it seems curiously non-adaptive that women who have responsibility not only for themselves but also for their unborn offspring should be vulnerable in this way. Only an assumption of an association between pregnancy and debilitation would lead to the a priori prediction that pregnant women will have general problems with memory, attention and learning. However, as we shall show in this chapter, the picture is complicated and the research literature contradictory.
