Shifts in Color Discrimination during Early Pregnancy

Abstract

Abstract:The present study explores two hypotheses: a) women during early pregnancy should experience increased color discrimination ability, and b) women during early pregnancy should experience shifts in subjective preference away from images of foods that appear either unripe or spoiled. Both of these hypotheses derive from an adaptive view of pregnancy sickness that proposes the function of pregnancy sickness is to decrease the likelihood of ingestion of foods with toxins or teratogens. Changes to color discrimination could be part of a network of perceptual and physiological defenses (e.g., changes to olfaction, nausea, vomiting) that support such a function. Participants included 13 pregnant women and 18 non-pregnant women. Pregnant women scored significantly higher than non-pregnant controls on the Farnsworth-Munsell (FM) 100 Hue Test, an objective test of color discrimination, although no difference was found between groups in preferences for food images at different stages of ripeness or spoilage. These results are the first indication that changes to color discrimination may occur during early pregnancy, and is consistent with the view that pregnancy sickness may function as an adaptive defense mechanism.

Preliminary data for performance in hue ordering tests during pregnancy

“…We found a similarity of color vision performance between non-pregnant women and pregnant women using Farnsworth D15 test, a short version of the Farnsworth-Munsell 100 hue test. We have no clear explanation for the differences between our and Orbán and Dastur's investigation (20). The main differences were that the change occurs more slightly in the Farnsworth-Munsell 100 hue test than in Farnsworth D15 test, and thus, the latter could enable to find small differences between the first-trimester pregnant and non-pregnant women.…”

“…A previous investigation compared the color vision of first-trimester pregnant to non-pregnant women (20). The investigators used the Farnsworth-Munsell 100 hue test to evaluate the color vision of the sample.…”

“…Both studies had similar sample sizes and age range of the control and first-trimester pregnant women. The control groups were different, because we included women using contraceptive hormonal therapy, while Orbán and Dastur (20) had only women without contraceptive therapy. We considered that there was no evidence of negative influence from the contraceptive hormone therapy in the color vision (24) and all participants had normal results in the ophthalmological examination.…”

“…Also, a previously published study investigated the influence of pregnancy on color vision. It was observed that first-trimester pregnant women had better performance in the hue ordering test than non-pregnant women (20). The authors explained that the difference was due to the hormonal status of the pregnant women that would be similar to the status of non-pregnant women in the ovulatory stage of the menstrual cycle (21).…”

The Transition from Crawling to Walking: Can Infants Elicit an Alteration of Their Parents’ Perception?

“…Although various studies (e.g., Stuchlìkovà, 1995 ; Fox et al, 2001 ) showed that anxious individuals interpret objects as being more threatening compared to non-anxious individuals, no research has dealt with these phenomena of interaction between caregiver and child during the transition from crawling to walking. Although there are studies ( Orbán and Dastur, 2012 ; Roos and Lochner, 2012 ), that show a distortion of perception in pregnant mothers, especially in relation to stimuli that might be important for the survival or safety of the fetus, to our knowledge no studies have yet dealt with verifying the presence of perceptive alteration in the parent during this transition.…”