Auditorial wiring?

This is by no means a scientific post. It is purely anecdotal, and based on a fairly small population sample :-)
But most of all, it is a 'fun' post. Too many 'serious' posts recently :-)



I have harped on enough about (some) women being 'auditory'. Chiefly referring to my own self, I believe this to be true for a fair number of other women I know.

I decided to look further into this, because I think it is interesting enough to talk about.

My own 'auditory' cue may be more 'literal' than I believe the general feminine auditory cue to be.
As a teen, I went through a short period of unexplained hearing impairment. Nothing was found to be wrong with my hearing, but for some reason I struggled for a while in social settings, especially outside of my immediate family.

Whilst I put it down to 'psychological' or perhaps even more apt 'psychosomatic', I really don't know why any psychological issue might even manifest itself this way, assuming that I had any psychological issue in the first place.

What is also interesting to me is that it was fairly 'selective' in that I never had this problem in the company of people I knew, i.e. my family.
And...being a budding musician at the time, I never had problems hearing music and certainly not when I was playing.
But I think I have an alternative explanation for that too, in that I (and again I think I have mentioned this before), I tend to see music rather than hear it anyway!
More on that later.

(I think) I ended up with a heightened sense of hearing as direct result of the above. So I am extra sensitive to what I hear than I would normally have been had it not been for this slight blip in my sensory development.

So whilst I remain 'visual' in a lot of ways, (for example, I am a 'visual' learner in the sense that I won't retain information unless I 'see' it - and I have since learned that this is the basis for the so-called photographic memory' and why I learn best when I see images and why I learn languages quicker by reading/writing rather than speaking/listening.
And of course, why when I was a pianist I learned my musical notation not by how notes sounded but by how they 'looked' to me.

But I am not at all visual when it comes to attraction. Like most women I really don't care what a man looks like, unless it provides a clue as to something else about his character/personality. So perhaps if I like a muscular build (I don't, particularly! - just an example), it would be more because the man in question takes care of himself than the muscles per se...
Or so my hamster argues it...
:-)

But the (speaking) voice is a big deal for me. And apparently it is for a number of women too.
And oddly enough, when I talk of attraction here, it is not restricted to the opposite gender. I make or don't make even female friends based on this too, in many ways.

And I was amused to watch a Youtube video made by a lovely woman (who was a beautician) about beauty tips including facial massage.
Several people (including many women) commented on her voice (she had one of the calmest voices I have ever heard!) and not the content of her video :-)


I also remarked that in the film 'Firelight', Elizabeth Laurier was keen to hear Charles Godwin's voice during her 'interview' with the go-between for the business arrangement she was about to undertake with him. I smiled at that, because I recognised why she needed to do that.

Why would women be auditory?
Is there a scientific basis to this? Is there an evolutionary advantage to this that I have missed?

I promised not to get all scientific on you :-)

But here is the 'evidence' I have unearthed.

Women are more sensitive to the spoken word than men. In many ways, language, and words are more a woman's 'currency' than these are for men.
Men communicate best by their actions. Women communicate best by words. Little girls learn to speak at an earlier age than boys, although boys walk at an earlier age than girls.

Women are also suckers for 'sweet nothings' in the romantic arena in a way that most men are not, or at least men are less susceptible to this!
To this end, women are more 'hypnotisable' than men.
It is a slightly 'dangerous' position for a woman to be in, of course. But there we are...

The quasi-scientific basis for all the above is that a woman's brain has more synapses or connections in it than a man's brain, and is also smaller than  a man's brain (in relation to body surface area/body mass).
So what all this means is that a woman's brain is primed for communication, which usually involves the use of language but not exclusively so.
So if she talks a lot (um, to you men it's called 'nagging' lol), she also has to listen a lot (principally to other women who are also exercising their right to speak :-)
So a woman is just as auditory as she is vocal.


For the life of me, I can't find any evolutionary reasons why a woman might be auditory though.
(And believe me I looked hard). Anyone know?

Or maybe I am just a bit odd? :-)



But it seems I am not alone...
I have long been a big fan of French pianist Hélène Grimaud ever since I happened on her performances (not in person) at The Proms (UK) and the Lucern Festival in Switzerland. She is actually now resident in Switzerland, so I might get my wish of seeing and hearing her play in future concerts here (heaven!).

One thing I find fascinating about her is that although she is was born in France (father is Jewish Algerian, mother is Italian), she lived in the USA for a long time, so she has a funny mix of French/American accent which strangely enough (aided by her manner of fast speaking as well) makes her sound (and  look, courtesy of her blonde hair)...German :-)
To me, that is quite a combination of accents.
(She did in fact live in Berlin for a short while, but she sounded 'German' long before she moved there).


She also happens to be a strikingly beautiful woman by the way. I would value the men's (especially) opinion on this.
She has very piercing blue eyes, and moreover her gaze is somewhat 'magnetic' (not my words - the french press coined this one about her) and maybe even 'hypnotic'.


Some might say, and actually they do, that Ms. Grimaud is a bit of a 'weirdo'.
She runs a centre for wolves where she raises wolves like some people raise horses or dogs. She is a bit of a 'wolf whisperer'.

And when I asked my French colleagues about her, every single one knew her because of her association with wolves and not because she is an international pianist ;)
And always with the comeback: 'Ah yes, she's a peculiar one'.
All of which made me worry about how I might be perceived by these same colleagues, since I do not find Hélène Grimaud peculiar in the least :-)


Anyhow she also has this ability to 'see' music, like I do. Synaesthesia, it is called.
Is this a piano thing I wonder? Or does this pertain to all musicians, professional or otherwise?

To her, the note 'F' is red, 'G' is green, for example. She goes into elaborate detail on what hues and colours she sees which she associates with this note or that.
This fascinates me because I have the same 'problem'.

I don't see colours though, when I hear people speak.
But I gain a lot more information about them when I hear them than when I see them, and I find it odd given that anything else I learn is based on the visual.

Anyone else have a tale of a similar nature to tell?
Or have I just freaked everyone out by my weirdness?

Please tell me I am normal.
Even if you have to lie to me :-)

At 6:44 in this video, she speaks about her 'synaesthesia' when she appears on a  Dutch TV programme.
The interview actually begins at 02:00 (in English).
Totally off-topic, but relevant in the context of the general theme of this blog...
Does anyone else feel what's going on with the man sitting next to the host of the show?
I wonder if Hélène twigged onto this? (I must say it is so much easier to notice these things as a bystander).
Eh Bell?
;)

Just eat your soup and let her talk

The above was LL Cool J's response to the question: 'Tell me about the woman in your life'.

The interviewer burst out laughing at this answer and brought the interview to a quick close at this point.
I laughed out loud too at this answer.
Because it is oh so familiar.

The opening scene of 'Captain Corelli's Mandolin' sees a man brought in to the village doctor's house by his wife because he is 'deaf'. After a brief examination, the doctor works out the problem and duly fishes out a pea out of the man's ear. A pea, which it would appear he may have accidentally inserted into his ear from childhood.
Captain Corelli's Mandolin' is a war-film.
There are horrific scenes of death, betrayal and pain.
But by the end of this film, this man's only complaint is about the nagging of his wife. In the last scene of the film, he is practically begging the doctor to put the pea back in his ear because he can't take it anymore.

:-)

I don't know much about LL Cool J except that he is a rapper and actor.
I have never heard him rap but I have seen him in a sitcom or two years ago.
But like most men, he seems to have certainly figured out the key to a peaceful life :-)

My own musical hero Ludwig van had no such problems. Deafness, although of course is an unfortunate medical difficulty, could be, for the man looking for a silver lining to his raincloud, the perfect way of escaping some of life's little stresses.

What is it about women's chit-chat that men find so unbearable?
What is it about women's chit-chat that make men brave outside temperatures of minus twenty for hours at a time when they are not even smokers but need a desperate excuse to leave the frenzy of female conversation?

Even with 'masculine eyes' I cannot seem to get to the bottom of this one.

I do like one-word answers. Even to 'open questions'. I really do.  It is reassuringly familiar. In this, I am probably one of the outliers.

But I cannot live with this all the time.
This is one big reason I have female friends :-)
One of the functions of  'the herd' is to preserve sanity :-)

There is an evolutionary benefit to a quiet man of course. Out on the hunt, if the wild deer heard you, neither you nor your family would be getting any dinner that night. In fact, if the hunted were dangerous enough to become the hunter, you might not even make it home to dinner.

I get that.

When I asked the question about why men are quiet during traumatic times, in The Quiet Man, I got decent answers that satisfied my curiosity somewhat.
"Men are stoic."
"It is not worth speaking when no-one is listening."
"It is just male nature."

I get that.

I also get that most men need a certain 'quiet time' usually after a transition from one activity to another, typically the transition from work to homelife.

I get that.

But the situation I am describing is neither 'out on the hunt', nor traumatic nor an infringement of 'quiet time'.

Take dinnertime, for instance. Which is precisely the time LL Cool J is referring to.

Is it physically painful to indulge in a little chit-chat about the day's events, or the political climate, or the economic crisis?
Or any other topic?

Or during social settings where the general theme is not sport- or work-related.

Why do men clam up?

Is there a reason other than boredom?
Is boredom ever a valid reason?
Or am I just in the wrong crowd?
It is known that a woman's 'corpus callosum', the part of the brain that connects the left and right hemispheres is much more developed than a man's, even though a man's brain is bigger in mass, corrected for body surface area.
The part that deals with language skills is also better developped in women.
Hence to say that a woman is wired to communicate is in fact a biological truism.

But is there not a design fault in the system if the talker has no audience?
There would be no need for this post if men were known to be good listeners :-)
But again the number one (number two?) complaint about men is that they do not appear to listen to or hear women.
Which is odd, because the hunter has to have a keen sense of hearing, no?

Something does not quite add up.

Is there a chance of selective hearing going on, maybe?
Or is it really the case that men are not wired to hear women at all. Just each other, i.e. other men.

Is this a cruel trick of Nature that women can only communicate effectively with each other?
Or is it a design fault that God hasn't quite gotten round to fixing yet because he is procrastinating, but 'watch this space'?
Given that 'one day' to God equals a thousand years, we might be in for a long wait...

What you don't see is the woman yapping away in the background. This man is in 'tune out' mode :-)
Where do men learn how to do the 'tune out' thing? Is this part of the 'locker room' training?