Re: hearing, gender, new info...

[Laurie Hatch <lahatch@dnai.com>]

        Corynne wrote:
>
>  This might be of more concern to Laurie, (as she was asking about more
>info about hearing and gender) Sarahjane and Kim but I remebered some 
>other
>information I learned about possible differences in hearing between the
>genders.  There was a special edition of 20/20 a few months back which was
>strictly devoted to the discussion of cerebral differences between 
>genders.
[snip...]

Thanks Corynne!  Very interesting, and kind of funny too - not having seen 
the 
program, I was reminded of the classic sitcom scene of a hapless husband 
oblivious to his frustrated wife, with countless satirical variations that 
are 
flattering to neither ;-).  The question of which perceptual behaviors are 
culturally/environmentally learned as opposed to being physiological in 
origin 
is extremely complex.  (The old conundrum "which comes first, the chicken 
or 
the egg" comes to mind, not to mention the tangled circular web of 
physiological changes *triggered* by certain behaviors.)  Anyway, I 
emailed ABC 
to see if the transcript and references could be gotten.

>to one story and not the other one.  The conclusions of the researchers
>were that women's attentions will be drawn back and forth between the two
>stories and get bits and pieces of each and have an almost impossible time
>staying on one story while the other one is also going which is exactly
>what happened to me.  I've had this before also and it's really annoying
>sometimes but it's good if your trying to listen to more than one person 
>at
>a time.  Supposedly, men can tune out one story much more easily and 
>listen
>to it only, they seem to have trouble listening to more than one thing at 
>a
>time.

I wonder if this occurs primarily with speech, or if any of these supposed 
differences are also evident in how males and females perceive music -- 
multiple layers, counterpoint, melody, etc.?

More sophisticated, aware listening, as musicians generally experience it, 
is a 
skill that can be developed with training and practice.  It seems that 
such 
people would not necessarily populate the statistical norm that is being 
discussed here.

My sweetie, who was a fighter pilot, just told me an interesting and 
vaguely 
related story about airline pilot training.  (This was a while back, when 
there 
were extremely few, if any, women in either the cockpit or control tower.) 
 The 
problem was alerting the pilot, whose attention was already considerably 
divided due to a flight emergency, to extremely important warnings.  
During 
landing, one of the most critical signals is to lower the @#$%^&* landing 
wheels!  They found out the hard way that big blinking red warning lights 
were 
often ineffective.  They added a unique, loud, and persistent beep.  Some 
pilots *still* didn't notice, and would land gear up.  A blaring horn 
blast was 
tried, but occasionally missed, the consequences of which tended to make 
passengers rather unhappy.  Then somebody had an inspiration... get this: 
the 
most effective warning device, amidst the general cockpit hubbub, was a 
woman's 
voice calmly telling the guy to get his gear down! (No comments from the 
peanut 
gallery.)  I wonder if it is still as effective nowadays, since women's 
voices 
are much more common in that environment?  Also, what works best with 
women 
pilots? ...Hey, I bet they don't even *need* to be warned, they're already 
on 
top of it!  ~#:-))))

Anyway, I can hear it now.  Music For Landing Very Large Aircraft...

Gee, the "my girlfriend's taste in music" thread has gone through a few 
permutations!  (BTW, what does this list usually talk about?  Something 
about 
loops?  Trying to remember...)

and smiles to you, too, Corynne --
laurie







>From lists@slip.net Sun Mar 15 21:21:26 1998