I was listening to a radio programme this morning while preparing two lots of bread dough for baking. The fan oven was on and I was highly focussed on testing the portions of dough for readiness. Had proofing at room temperature yesterday afternoon plus spending all night in the fridge been sufficient to allow the sourdough yeast to perform its magic on my raw flour?
My wife entered the room and asked a question about an upcoming meeting with friends. I was able to listen to all the words she said, understand the question, formulate my answer and respond.
I don’t know whether that response was itself unclear, or if she couldn’t distinguish my words (do I mumble? I don’t think so!). But whatever the reason, she turned to the radio, switched it off entirely and told me firmly that it was impossible to concentrate when all these different noises were going on. Her explanation involved animated waving at the radio and the oven in case I hadn’t understood the words ‘radio’ and ‘oven’.
I found the whole event puzzling. I do know my own hearing isn’t the best but it does okay for normal purposes. I worked as a relationship manager for years, a job which involved attending many cocktail parties and similar events with high levels of ambient noise. My hearing deficit is slight but a common one. It’s an inability to distinguish words said to me by someone standing only a few feet away in a room full of others chattering away. It isn’t a lack of volume – au contraire – merely that my brain refuses to interpret those sounds into words and sentences. I remember going to an auditory specialist in America, who nodded solemnly and began his diagnosis with the expression, “Ah, yes. This again…”
This morning’s kitchen situation did include talking on the radio, but the main level of noise was the fan oven. Thus, to me, the words spoken by the live human were as clear as a bell. The live human in question went on to point out how curious it was that I was often capable of shutting out all other noise around me and focussing on one particular source of sound. In the usual manner of the distaff side of the marital equation, there followed a number of Exhibits – past examples when I had displayed this ability when it was in my own interest to do so. Actually, I could have added a few more – like sitting in an open office and blocking out all the conversation around me in favour of the caller on my telephone.
The event got me thinking, though. In the eternal war of the sexes, both sides suggest that men can only perform one task at a time, while women manage to multi-task. Over many years, scientists have tried to prove whether this is true and if so, why? What evolutionary forces pushed these differing developments? Social commentators have dreamed up fanciful arguments: nurturing infants requires women to cook, clean, educate and keep an eye on their offspring all at the same time. The male hunter must block out all extraneous influence or distractions and focus narrowly on finding, chasing and killing some prey to drag home for dinner. And avoid becoming prey for other creatures. These gender roles are traditional, yes, but is the phenomenon true to begin with?
Neuroscientists disagree with the simplistic assertion. Many men are capable of complex activities requiring split attention across several areas – air traffic controllers, for example. Or being Head Chef in a busy kitchen. Conversely, many women can be highly focussed on one single task – some writers exist in their own world while working, isolated temporarily from everything else until interrupted by hunger or another of life’s imperatives. Female surgeons display similar singular focus. They have to – their patient’s life may depend on it. These departures from the popular stereotype might require training, but we can all suggest instances where both genders perform at a high level under both circumstances.
Yet there are differences. Rather than examine only what occupies the focus of the person being studied, Canadian researchers have observed differences in the nature of what distracts men and women. During conversation, men fix their eyes on the speaker’s mouth. But they are distracted by large or conspicuous movements of objects in the background. In contrast, women constantly switch their gaze between the speaker’s eyes and body and are more distracted by other people behind the speaker than by movement of objects. Might this suggest that women are better at picking up body language skills? Perhaps. It’s speculation on my part, since observation of body language – more correctly called ‘non-verbal communication’ - can be taught. It does call for active listening, though. And these are visual differences rather than auditory.
A study conducted at Harvard University ten years ago suggested gender differences in attention span narrowed in populations in which there was greater equality between the sexes. The team started from a base finding that men are generally more vigilant about spotting certain signals while women have better inhibitory control - an ability to override their natural urge to respond. The research involved more than 16,000 men and women, between the ages of 10 and 70, from 41 countries. Results revealed greater differences in attention scores between men and women from countries with less gender equality.
Further back in 2013, another team at the University of Pennsylvania scanned the brains of around 1,000 boys and girls and men and women. They used a water-based scanning technique to create images of how the brains of the subjects connected internally to solve problems and perform cognitive tests. They observed that male brains connect front to back with very few lateral connections between the hemispheres. In female subjects, the reverse was true. Pathways criss-crossed actively between left and right. The results suggested that women scored well on attention, word and face memory, and social cognition, while men performed better on spatial processing and sensor-motor speed.
I admit reading these studies began to make my own brain cell glow at the edges and look for somewhere to lie down for a rest. So while you folks digest all this, here are some pictures of fresh bread, baked this morning, don’t you know? For those who are sourdough fans, the mix is half wholemeal rye flour, half strong white flour, baked for an hour at 200 degrees Centigrade. Not sure which hemisphere I used to achieve them, but my taste buds registered great pleasure when I ate some for lunch.
Can you multitask? Or maybe just think you can? When reading a book, are you utterly immersed and do you lose track of time?
Let me know!