| Directed attention, the ability to focus and concentrate, is essential for effective functioning. Pregnancy, birth, and parenting place unique demands on attentional capacity, increasing the risk of attentional fatigue. A longitudinal quasi-experimental design was used to examine changes in attention in the third trimester of pregnancy and postpartum and to test a restorative intervention. A convenience sample of 57 pregnant women was recruited from prenatal education classes and assigned to treatment or control groups. Women in the treatment group were asked to spend 120 minutes each week in the natural environment. Women entered the study in the third trimester of pregnancy and were tested again at 37 weeks of gestation and within the first week after delivery. On objective measures of attention, participants performed within a normal range at all times, but improved significantly by the end of pregnancy and after delivery. With subjective measures, women had moderately low perceived effectiveness throughout the study. Some psychosocial tasks of pregnancy were associated with attention. Women experiencing the greatest conflict in psychosocial tasks also had more difficulty using directed attention. The effect that attentional capacity had on labor pain was not clear, but the findings suggest that decreased attentional functioning during pregnancy may be associated with more labor pain. The restorative intervention was most effective in reducing errors for women who were attentionally fatigued and those who completed the intervention. |
