Implicit and explicit memory in pregnant women: An analysis of data-drivenand conceptually driven processes

A study by Brindle, Brown, Brown, Griffith, and Turner (1991), reported tha t pregnant women showed impaired implicit memory (as measured by a stem com pletion task) in the presence of intact explicit memory. The present study was an attempt to replicate and extend this finding by employing a read/gen erate encoding manipulation across data-driven (word fragment completion an d graphemic cued recall) and conceptually driven (semantic cued recall and category generation) tests. A total of 64 women (32 pregnant) were tested o n both data-driven and conceptually driven tasks either directly or indirec tly. No differences emerged between pregnant subjects and non-pregnant cont rols across tasks. Subjects experiencing their first pregnancy did report t heir memory in the previous 2 weeks as being considerably worse than normal .