Received: 12 February 2019 Revised: 1 August 2019 Accepted: 4 August 2019

DOI: 10.1002/col.22425

RESEARCH ARTICLE

Modulation of visual attention assessed using the Stroop task

during the menstrual cycle: Comparison between the menstrual
and ovulation phases

Mayuko Iriguchi1 | Hiroki Koda1 | Takamasa Koyama2 | Nobuo Masataka1

1
The Cognition and Learning section, the
Primate Research Institute, Kyoto
University, Inuyama, Japan
2
The Department of Psychology, Japan
Women's University, Kawasaki, Japan
Correspondence
Mayuko Iriguchi, Primate Research Institute,
Kyoto University, Inuyama, Japan.
Email: iriguchi.mayuko.25m@kyoto-u.jp
Funding information
Japan Society for the Promotion of Science
(JSPS) and Ministry of Education, Culture,
Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT)
KAKENHI, Grant/Award Numbers:
#18H03503, #4903, JP17H06380
Abstract
Women might have changes in perception and cognition of colours according to
hormonal changes during the menstrual cycle. Colours are often associated with
specific emotional facial expressions, but how these two factors interact with each
other and differ according to the cycle has remained unclear. We investigated atten-
tional interference between colours and emotional facial expressions for women in
the menstrual compared to the ovulation phases by colour judgment based on
the Stroop tasks. Participants identified the colours (either red, yellow, or blue) of
three types of face stimuli (happy, neutral, or sad) and corresponding scrambled
face stimuli by pressing buttons, and we recorded participants' reaction times. The
results showed better performance in the menstrual phase than in the ovulation
phase. An interference effect was not observed. However, in the scrambled face
stimuli task, only the reaction time for happy scrambled face shape and red did not
differ between the phases. Thus, participants might pay stronger attention to faces
with colours in the menstrual phase than in the ovulation phase but weaker atten-
tion to scrambled face shapes in the menstrual phase.

KEYWORDS
colour judgment, emotional facial expression, menstrual cycle, Stroop task

1 | INTRODUCTION behavior, such as more frequent attendance at social meet-

1.1 | Female hormones, perception, and
cognition
Women often experience various changes in perception,
cognition, and behavior caused by changes in female hor-
mone levels during the menstrual cycle.1-4 This cycle typi-
cally occurs over about 28 days, and ovulation occurs at
about 14 days prior to the beginning of the next menstrua-
tion, although the length of one regular cycle depends on the
individual and health conditions.1 Regarding evolutionary
aspects, women near the time of ovulation have higher
reproductive fertility, and they show changes in social
ings, use of cosmetics, and choices of products to enhance
their appearance to attract men, although the subjects of
these studies have been limited to only university students in
the United States and Europe.2,5,6 Regarding perceptual and
cognitive functioning, women show differences in perfor-
mance of visual processing of asymmetries,7 visual-spatial
tasks,8,9 and the Stroop task3 across the menstrual cycle. For
example, performance in visual processing of asymmetries
and spatial pointing became better in the luteal phase with a
higher hormone level,7,8 while performance in the Stroop
task and spatial orientation task was better in the menstrual
phase with a lower hormone level than the mid-luteal
phase.3,9 In addition, women were reported to have a lower

Color Res Appl. 2019;1–10. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/col © 2019 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. 1

2 IRIGUCHI ET AL.
threshold of olfactory perception near the time of ovulation,4
but some studies found higher sensitivity in the ovulation
phase or no clear differences during the course of the men-
strual cycle.10,11 These findings suggest that there is a rela-
tionship between the menstrual cycle and perceptual and
cognitive functions and that the sensitivities of various func-
tions show different tendencies during the course of the
cycle. There does not seem to be a consistent pattern among
the sensitivities reported thus far, and hormones may affect
the sensitivities differently, particularly cognitive functions,
according to the different types of task.3
1.2 | Colour perception and cognition
Perception and cognition, particularly of colours, may also
change during the menstrual cycle. Regarding social behavioral
aspects such as colour preference, a number of studies demon-
strated that women prefer warmer colours, especially red or
pink, in the ovulatory phase at peak fertility and wear clothes
with these colours, and this might be part of women's strategy
to enhance their reproduction by making themselves look more
attractive to men.12-14 Regarding perception, women using hor-
monal contraceptives showed more errors in the ability of col-
our perception than women who did not use hormonal
contraceptives,15 and women perform better in a colour dis-
crimination task at ovulation than at the beginning of the men-
strual phase (day 1-3) and end of the cycle (day 26-32).16 In
addition, visual perception of short-wavelength (bluish) colours
could be affected by hormonal changes, and the visual field
threshold sensitivity for perceiving these colours seems to
decline in the luteal phase.17,18 Our previous study also demon-
strated that postmenopausal women had relatively slower reac-
tion times to blue stimuli than premenopausal women in colour
judgment in the Stroop task.19
In order to examine attentional judgment of coloured
stimuli in women during the menstrual cycle, the colour-
word Stroop task is often used. This task was originally
designed to examine interference when a participant looked
at a stimulus consisting of two different types of information
(eg, colour words and colours), and attentional perception
was compared between a congruent condition (colour words
tinted with the same colours as the words' meanings) and an
incongruent condition (colour words tinted with different
colours from their meanings).20 Regarding performance in
attentional judgment of women during the menstrual cycle,
using the colour-word Stroop task, Hatta and Nagaya dem-
onstrated that times to complete the Stroop task in the men-
strual phase (with lower hormonal levels) were significantly
shorter than the times in the luteal phase (with higher hor-
monal levels).3 However, several studies found no clear dif-
ference in performance in the Stroop task according to
hormonal changes during the menstrual cycle.21-23 These
findings suggest that hormonal changes during the menstrual
cycle may influence specific perception, preferences, and
social behavior regarding colours that may be related to fer-
tility, while the effect of hormonal changes during the men-
strual cycle on attention measured using the Stroop task has
remained controversial.
1.3 | Social stimulus recognition: Emotional
facial expressions
Women are likely to modulate their recognition of social
information, particularly facial expressions, according to the
menstrual cycle. At the time of ovulation, women are likely
to prefer masculine faces of men.24,25 Regarding emotional
facial expressions, women are able to detect and remember
facial expressions better in the follicular phase than the luteal
phase,26,27 and women tend to perceive angry and sad faces
more accurately in the follicular phase than any other
phases.28 However, several studies reported different results,
for example, results showing that women have difficulties in
perceiving or remembering expressions such as disgust, sad-
ness, and fear in the follicular phase, while sensitivity to
these facial expressions increases in the luteal phase.29-31
Other studies also reported that women showed no differ-
ence in preference for masculine faces of men during
ovulation,32 and they showed a delayed response when
matching a stimulus of emotional facial expression to one of
the choices regarding it according to their memory during
the follicular phase.30 Thus, during the menstrual cycle,
female hormones could affect facial preference and percep-
tion of emotional facial expressions, but these influences still
seem to be controversial.
1.4 | Social information, emotion and colour
Attention and recognition of social information, including
emotion and facial expressions, are often examined, and the
Stroop task, particularly the form of it called the emotional
Stroop task, is used as one of the experimental methods for
such examinations. Several studies used this task to examine
emotional interference using emotional words such as war
and abuse and showed that participants who have high anxi-
ety sensitivity tend to respond to words related to anxiety
more than to any other words.33-35
Emotional facial expressions or emotional words might
often be associated with specific colours (eg, a happy face
with yellow or a sad face with blue),36-38 although the stud-
ies that found such an association mainly focused on univer-
sity students as participants, and the association with
different background factors such as age, gender, and culture
might be unclear. However, interaction between emotional
facial expressions and colours in the Stroop task has not
IRIGUCHI ET AL.
been well examined. Eschenbeck et al used pictorial facial
images (happy and threatening) and four colours (red, blue,
yellow, and green) in the Stroop task for school children,
and the results showed that children with higher levels of
anxiety had higher errors when they judged colours of
threatening stimuli.39 However, how attention to and judg-
ment of colours are interfered with by emotional facial
expressions remains unknown, and in particular, how
women give attention to and judge colours of the emotional
facial stimuli according to hormonal changes during the
menstrual cycle has not been reported.
As a number of previous studies suggest, women may have
some modulations of perception and cognition according to
colour and social information. However, the interaction
between colour and social information, such as emotional
facial expressions, and the association between this interaction
and women's menstrual cycle have remained unclear. In order
to examine the interaction between colour and emotional facial
expressions of women during the menstrual cycle, we applied
the Stroop task, which is the same task we previously used to
examine the association between colour and emotional facial
expression according to menopausal status.19 In the present
experiment, we predicted that task performance of participants
would decline when they were in the menstrual phase, with
lower hormonal levels, compared to when they were in the
ovulation phase, with higher levels. We also hypothesized that,
when judging colours, participants' responses could be inter-
fered with by emotional facial expressions, particularly when
these colours and emotional facial expressions were incongru-
ent and that the responses could also differ between the men-
strual phase and ovulation phase.
This study is a part of the doctoral thesis of one of the
authors, Mayuko Iriguchi, and participants in this study also
participated in another study, which has been submitted for
publication.
2 | MATERIALS AND METHODS
2.1 | Ethics
We carried out all experiments in accordance with the Guide-
lines for Research in Human Participants, issued by the Human
Research Ethics Committee of Primate Research Institute,
Kyoto University, and the experimental protocol was approved
by the Committee (Permit No.2017-05). Before the experi-
ments, we obtained a signed consent form from all participants.
2.2 | Participants
Twenty-six female university undergraduate and postgradu-
ate students (mean with SD of ages: 21.62 ± 1.499 years,
range: 20-24 years) participated in the experiments, and they
3
had regular menstrual cycles and recorded each starting date
of menstruation (mean with SD of menstrual cycle: 29.73
± 2.82 days) without taking contraceptive or hormonal med-
icine. After receiving consent to participation, we asked all
participants about their menstrual cycle history for the past
several months. Based on these records, we calculated the
next starting date of a menstrual period and the approximate
date of ovulation, which is about 14 days before the next
starting date of a menstrual period. Each participant joined
the experiments twice, namely, on a date within 4 days from
the beginning of a menstrual period and on a date within
3 days from the estimated date of ovulation. According to
participants' menstrual cycle, some participants participated
in the first experiment at the beginning of a menstrual period
and in the second experiment during the ovulation period,
and others participated in the opposite order, and thus, the
order of experiments was counterbalanced for participants.
After the experiments, particularly at the time of ovulation,
we asked all participants to inform us of the next start date
of the menstrual period in order to confirm the estimated
ovulation date. Of 26 participants, 15 participated in experi-
ments earlier or later than the first 4 days from the start
of the menstrual period or more than 3 days earlier or later
than the calculated time of ovulation, so we excluded the
data of these participants from the analysis. The remaining
11 participants participated in the experiments twice: on
dates within the first 4 days from the start of the menstrual
period and on the calculated ovulation dates without a shift
of more than 3 days from the estimated ovulation time, and
we carried out the analysis using the data of these 11 partici-
pants (age: 22.00 ± 1.67 years, range: 20-24 years, men-
strual cycle: 30.55 ± 2.50 days). All participants were
Japanese, and they had no cognitive disorder tested by the
Raven Coloured Progressive Matrices or colour blindness
tested by the Ishihara Color Vision Test.
2.3 | Visual stimuli
We used simple cartoon depictions of faces as social stimuli
and scrambled faces as nonsocial stimuli. These face stimuli
had three types of emotional expressions: happy, neutral, or
sad, and each type of face was scrambled to produce the
three types of scrambled face stimuli (Figure 1). Each stimu-
lus was shown with one of three colours: red, yellow, or blue
(Table 1). All stimuli were converted to a size fitted to
250 × 250 pixels, and these stimuli were approximately
4 cm in diameter and 50 cm away from the participant.
2.4 | Apparatus
We used a table computer with a custom-made program
written with OpenSesame software ver. 3.1.6 (Mathôt,
4 IRIGUCHI ET AL.

angle connecting the center of the screen and participant's

FIGURE 1 Types of stimuli: emotional face expressions
included happy, neutral, and sad (left), and scrambled stimuli contained
their scrambled elements (right)
eye position was approximately 30 . In a single trial, first, a
fixation dot of an 8-pixel radius appeared at the center of the
screen on a gray background (Table 1, Figure 2). After a ran-
dom interval of 0.5 to 1.5 seconds, the fixation dot dis-
appeared, and one of either a happy, neutral, or sad stimulus
appeared at the center of the screen. The stimulus dis-
appeared either when participants pressed a button or auto-
matically after a 15-second interval if participants did not
press any button. When the stimulus appeared, participants
judged the colour (either red, yellow, or blue) of the stimulus
by pressing one of the three buttons of the keypad, which cor-
responded with the colour, using their right hand. The posi-
tions of buttons were counterbalanced for each participant.
After participants responded, the next trial was automatically
started. The study included an initial practice session, followed
by two experimental tasks. Each task consisted of 81 trials, in
which three types of stimuli, happy, neutral, and sad, appeared
randomly in any one of three colours—red, yellow, or blue—
nine times for each (three stimulus types × three
colours × nine times). Each participant performed both the
face stimuli task and scrambled face stimuli task for a total of
162 trials (81 trials × 2 tasks). We recorded all the reaction
times of the keypad presses during the experiments.

2.6 | Analysis
T A B L E 1 Colours of stimuli and background by Yxy (CIE,
Reaction times were analyzed by a repeated-measurements
cd/m2), measured by a chromatic photometer (Konica Minolta,
CS-100A)
design based on linear mixed models in SPSS ver. 25. Prior
to fitting the model, we used the reaction times with correct
Colour Y x y answers and those within the range of two times the SDs
Red 18.1 0.556 0.361 (2SD) and excluded the outlier data beyond these ranges
Yellow 73.0 0.432 0.488 (about 6.3% of all the data). We set the repeated conditions
Blue 21.5 0.202 0.243 of participants (menstrual phase or ovulation phase), the
Background 55.5 0.312 0.356 stimulus type (happy, neutral, or sad), and the colour (red,
yellow, or blue) with their interaction effect terms (con-
dition × stimulus type × colour) as the fixed main effect
2010-2016) in Microsoft Surface Pro 2 for all tasks in the terms, and participant ID was a random-effect term. When
experiments and a USB keypad that was connected to the we observed a significant interaction effect, as a post hoc
tablet. Participants pressed one of the buttons on the keypad comparison, we computed the 95% confidence intervals of
to indicate their judgment of the stimulus colours, and their the estimated marginal means between two comparison
response times were recorded on the keypad. levels for each level of the other condition and examined
whether the two levels differed significantly.

2.5 | Procedure
In the experiments, participants sat in front of the Surface
screen (resolution: 1920 × 1080 pixels) and the keypad on a
desk in an experimental room illuminated with daylight and
standard fluorescent lights with a colour temperature of
4200 K (Hotalux Ltd., Tokyo, Japan). The screen was
approximately 50 cm away from the participant, and the
3 | RESULTS
We found a statistically significant difference in reaction
time in the face stimuli task between participants in the men-
strual phase and ovulation phase (F1, 1651.063 = 11.725,
P = .001, partial η2 = 0.062; Figure 3). Participants were
likely to respond to the stimuli faster in the menstrual phase
IRIGUCHI ET AL. 5

FIGURE 2 Procedure of experiment: a fixation dot appeared at the center of the screen on a gray background. After a 0.5 to 1.5-second
interval, the fixation dot disappeared, and one of either a happy, neutral, or sad stimulus appeared with either red, yellow, or blue colour. Then,
participants judged the colour of the stimulus by pressing one of the three buttons of the keypad

than in the ovulation phase. However, no interaction effects
were found between conditions, stimuli types, and colours.
A similar pattern appeared in the scrambled face stim-
uli task, namely, participants were likely to respond to
stimuli faster in the menstrual phase than the ovulation
phase (F1, 1641.106 = 14.335, P < .001, partial η2 = 0.063;
Figure 4). However, in the scrambled face stimuli task, we
also found interaction effects between conditions of par-
ticipants and stimuli types (F2, 1641.097 = 4.488, P = .011,
partial η2 = 0.038) and between conditions and colours
(F2, 1641.056 = 3.383, P = .034, partial η2 = 0.031). Reaction
times of participants to a happy scrambled face did not differ
between the menstrual and ovulation phases, while those to
neutral and sad scrambled faces became faster in the menstrual
phase than in the ovulation phase (Figure 5). Likewise, reac-
tion times to red did not largely differ between the phases, but
those to yellow and blue showed differences between the men-
strual phase and ovulation phase (Figure 5).
The accuracy rates for face stimuli task were 97.5% and
95.8% in the menstrual phase and ovulation phase, respectively,
and those for scrambled face stimuli task were 96.7% and
96.9% in the menstrual phase and ovulation phase, respectively.
Women were thus likely to have relatively high accuracy rates
in both phases and both tasks.
4 | DISCUSSION
The results showed different patterns of the reaction times
between the menstrual phase and ovulation phase. Partici-
pants tended to respond to stimuli faster when they were in
the menstrual period than when they were near the ovulation
period, in both face stimuli and scrambled face stimuli tasks.
These results were contrary to our prediction that perfor-
mance would be better during ovulation than during men-
struation. Moreover, in disagreement with our hypothesis, in
the face stimuli task, an interaction between emotional facial
expressions (happy, neutral, or sad) and colours (red, yellow,
or blue) was not observed in either the menstrual or ovula-
tion phase. Thus, participants were not likely to experience
6 IRIGUCHI ET AL.

FIGURE 3 Average reaction time (ms) in the face stimuli task with the SE for participants in menstrual phase (left) and ovulation phase
(right) according to stimulus colour and type. Graph (A) shows reaction times to happy face, graph (B) shows those to neutral face, and graph
(C) shows those to sad face. In these graphs, bars indicate the colour of each stimulus: white bar for red, gray bar for yellow, and black-dotted bar
for blue

interference by emotional facial expressions when they
judged stimulus colours.
Our findings showed that participants tended to perform
better regarding colour judgment in the Stroop task during
the menstrual phase than during the ovulation phase, and this
pattern seemed to occur both in the face and scrambled face
stimuli tasks. Thus, unlike our initial prediction, it may not
be straightforward to argue that women's performance would
simply decline in the menstrual phase according to the low
level of hormones, while the performance would be better in
the ovulation phase according to the higher hormonal levels.
Similarly, several studies reported better task performance
when the hormonal level was lower in the menstrual or fol-
licular phase than when the hormonal level was higher in the
ovulation or luteal phase. For instance, women had better
performance in spatial tasks such as mental rotations and
space relations, particularly related to three-dimensional
tasks, in the menstrual phase, with low hormone level, than
in the late follicular or midluteal phase, when the hormone
level is increased.9,40 Performance in the colour-word Stroop
task reported by Hatta and Nagaya demonstrated that women
performed better in the menstrual phase than in the midluteal
phase, suggesting that the menstrual phase with low hor-
mone level might influence better performance, particularly
in tasks related to attention.3 Hormonal changes during the
menstrual cycle may modulate perceptual and cognitive
functions of women, but such modulation might appear in
different manners according to the types of task.
Some studies also reported that emotional facial expres-
sions could be associated with specific colours, and thus, we
are likely to imagine facial expressions with particular col-
ours. For instance, participants were more likely to relate a
IRIGUCHI ET AL. 7

FIGURE 4 Average reaction time (ms) in the scrambled face stimuli task with the SE for participants in the menstrual phase (left) and
ovulation phase (right) according to stimulus colour and type. Graph (A) shows reaction times to happy scrambled shape, graph (B) shows those to
neutral scrambled shape, and graph (C) shows those to sad scrambled shape. In these graphs, bars indicate the colour of each stimulus: white bar for
red, gray bar for yellow, and black-dotted bar for blue

happy face with colours such as yellow, a sad face with blue,
and an angry face with red.36-38 Sutton and Altarriba examined
160 emotional words with both positive and negative mean-
ings, and interestingly, the majority of participants tended to
associate colours with specific emotional words.38 Children
aged 7 to 8 years old also seemed to categorize specific col-
ours into either happy or unhappy emotions, although gender
differences in categorization were observed.41
However, in this study, interference by emotional facial
expressions in colour judgment was not observed, and this
could imply that the association between colours and emo-
tional facial expressions was not strong enough to affect per-
ceptual and attentional levels. In the scrambled face stimuli
task, on the other hand, interaction effects between the men-
strual cycle phase and stimulus shape and between the phase
and colour were found, and only the participants' reaction
times to a happy scrambled face and those to red did not
differ between the menstrual and ovulation phases
(Figure 5). One possible explanation for these phenomena is
that participants might not have strong attention for nonso-
cial stimuli with colours in the menstrual phase, so reaction
times did not differ largely between the phases, while they
might have stronger attention for social stimuli, including
facial expressions, together with colours in the menstrual
phase than in the ovulation phase. Our findings demon-
strated no interference with colour judgment by emotional
facial expressions, that is, the Stroop effect, but suggested
possible tendencies for participants' attention to vary
according to the menstrual cycle phase and possibly
according to whether the stimulus type was socially mean-
ingful or meaningless.
The present study includes several limitations to be con-
sidered. First, the number of participants for whom analyz-
able data were obtained was 11 of 26 participants, which
8 IRIGUCHI ET AL.

FIGURE 5 Average reaction time (ms) in the menstrual and ovulation phases in the face stimuli task and scrambled stimuli task, compared
only by stimulus type and colour. Graph (A) shows average reaction times in the face stimuli task by stimulus type, and graph (B) shows those by
colour. Graph (C) shows average reaction times in the scrambled face stimuli task by stimulus type, and graph (D) shows those by colour

was not large enough to reach robust conclusions. The age
range of participants was also relatively narrow. Thus, our
results showed possible trends regarding colour judgment in
the Stroop task for women during the menstrual cycle, and a
larger number and age range of participants would be neces-
sary to obtain more concrete conclusions in further studies.
Second, participants' menstrual cycle history was based on
their own records, and we calculated estimated ovulation
dates according to these records and confirmed that the
experiment dates near the estimated ovulation were appro-
priate or not by calculation of the date 14 days prior to
participants' next start date of the menstrual period. How-
ever, the menstrual cycle, ovulation, and hormonal level
could vary according to the participant, and thus, measure-
ment of the hormonal level would be necessary in order to
more accurately confirm hormonal conditions. Third, in this
study, we focused on the interaction between colour and
emotional facial expression in attentional behavior by colour
judgment in the Stroop task according to the menstrual
cycle, and association between a chromatic mechanism and
hormonal changes was not examined. Several studies men-
tioned a possible association between sensitivity to short-
IRIGUCHI ET AL.
wavelength light and changes in hormone level, whose
mechanism has remained unclear,17,18,42-44 and a chromatic
mechanism associated with hormonal changes should be
considered in future studies.
5 | CONCLUSI ON S
In conclusion, our findings suggest that participants were
likely to perform better in the menstrual phase than in the
ovulation phase regarding colour judgment based on the
Stroop task. Interaction between emotional facial expres-
sions and colours was not observed, but the lack of differ-
ence in reaction time to a happy scrambled face shape or red
in the scrambled face stimuli task between the phases may
imply that participants paid less attention to meaningless
shapes with colour in the menstrual phase and, paradoxi-
cally, paid stronger attention to meaningful shapes with col-
our in the menstrual phase compared to the ovulation phase.
Although there are several limitations in this study, the
results show possible associations between hormonal
changes and attention.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
We thank all the participants at Japan Women's University
and the Primate Research Institute who participated in the
experiments conducted from October 2017 to March 2018.
We also thank Elizabeth Nakajima for English proofreading
of this paper. This research was partly funded by the Japan
Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS) and the Minis-
try of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology
(MEXT) KAKENHI (#18H03503 and #4903, JP17H06380,
both awarded to H.K.).
O R C ID
Mayuko Iriguchi https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0961-6998
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A U T H O R B I O G R A P HI E S
Mayuko Iriguchi is a doctoral student at the Primate
Research Institute, Kyoto University, Japan. She is inter-
ested in colour perception and cognition, particularly for
women in menopause and the menstrual cycle, and peo-
ple in different cultural groups.
Hiroki Koda is an assistant professor in the Cognition
and Learning section at the Primate Research Institute,
Kyoto University. His research interest is in the evolution
of animal communication in primates.
Takamasa Koyama is a professor in the Department of
Psychology at Japan Women's University, Tokyo, Japan.
His research focuses on changes in the mind from pri-
mates to humans and evolution of the family and
morality.
Nobuo Masataka is a professor in the Cognition and
Learning section at the Primate Research Institute, Kyoto
University. His recent research covers colour preference
and aesthetic perceptual judgment of music in children
with autism.
How to cite this article: Iriguchi M, Koda H,
Koyama T, Masataka N. Modulation of visual
attention assessed using the Stroop task during the
menstrual cycle: Comparison between the menstrual
and ovulation phases. Color Res Appl. 2019;1–10.
https://doi.org/10.1002/col.22425