Avoidance Learning Across the Menstrual Cycle: A Conceptual Replication.

ABSTRACT: Hormonal transitions across the menstrual cycle may modulate human reward processing and reinforcement learning, but previous results were contradictory. Studies assessed relatively small samples (n < 30) and exclusively used within-subject designs to compare women in hormonally distinct menstrual cycle phases. This increased the risk of sporadic findings and results may have been disproportionally affected by expectancy effects. Also, replication studies are widely missing, which currently precludes any reliable inferences. The present study was intended as a conceptual replication of a previous study [(1), Neuropsychologia 84; n = 15]. There, we had observed a reduction in avoidance learning capacity when women were in the high estradiol state of the late follicular phase a

SUBMITTER: Diekhof EK 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7193994 | biostudies-literature | 2020

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature