Examining the Relation between Oral Contraceptive Use and Attention-Related Traits and States

Abstract

There is a rapidly growing body of work examining the association between the use of oral contraceptives (OCs) and cognition. This dissertation describes a series of studies examining the links between OC use and attention-related traits and states in large diverse samples (all OC Ns > 80). In Chapter 1, the literature on OC use and cognition—and in particular attention—are reviewed, highlighting the limitations of the extant work. Chapter 2 describes studies showing that OC users do not differ from non-OC users in terms of their self-reported traits tendencies to experience inattention (including spontaneous and deliberate mind wandering, attention related errors, and attention lapses). Chapter 3 discusses additional questionnaire-based studies showing that OC users tended to report less boredom proneness than non-users, but roughly equivalent levels of internal or external flow. In Chapter 4, the aforementioned attention-related (with the exception of boredom) were again examined as a function of OC use and OC formulation (in OC users), with results replicating outcomes of the prior studies and additionally showing that OC formulation is not associated with individual differences in attention-related traits. In Chapter 5 OC users and non-users completed a sustained attention task and reported their levels of mind wandering and media multitasking during the task; there were again no consistent differences between OC users and non-users on task performance, thought probe responses, or reports of media multitasking. Chapter 7 includes studies showing that OC users and non-users did not consistently differ on the self-overriding aspect of self-control or self-regulatory assessment, but that OC users consistently reported greater locomotion than non-users. Finally, in Chapter 7 includes a summary of the findings and discusses possible reasons for the inconsistent findings, the challenges of studying OC use and cognition, limitations of the present studies, and future directions.