Rob was reading and Sue was knitting a little green sweater for the grandchild they were expecting in about a month. She looked over at Rob and mentioned that Trish, a neighbour, had invited them for supper Friday night. She had told Trish she would check with Rob and get back to her, so would he like to go to Trish and Tom’s for supper?
Rob looked up with a blank stare, and Sue felt a slow burn starting as she realized he hadn’t heard anything she’d said. It had been like that since about the time Rob had turned 40. It was as though he just didn’t listen any more.
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The problem is the opposite for Hal, who feels that no matter what he says, his wife Janice, age 55, seems to take it the wrong way.
It turns out there may be a biological explanation for both their problems.
Teri James Bellis, an audiologist at the University of South Dakota, headed a study in 2001 to investigate differences in the way men and women listen. Bellis studied 120 right-handed adults (60 men and 60 women) divided into four age groups (20-25 years, 35-40 years, 55-60 years, and 70-75 years.) Each group took three tests to measure their ability to process sound. For example, one exam assessed whether people could listen to two different words or numbers at the same time and accurately report what they had heard.
“We were seeing a lot of men in their 30s and 40s coming into the clinic complaining that they had a hard time hearing and though their hearing was normal, when I looked at their central processing of language I found that they had problems similar to children with learning difficulties,” Bellis said.
The two halves of our brains are connected with a sort of fibrous network called the corpus callosum, which helps the two sides
communicate with each other. It turns out that as we get older, this bridging network deteriorates and our ability to process language isn’t what it used to be.
Bellis discovered this deterioration starts more than 10 years earlier in men than women, which is why Sue started to notice that Rob wasn’t listening when he was in his early 40s.
In fact, it can start as early as 35 in men, while the changes in women aren’t noticeable until they are through menopause, around age 55.
By the time we get to our 70s, we are about on par with each other.
“In the immediate postmenopausal years women showed significant right hemisphere deficits,” Bellis said. “They may therefore have difficulty interpreting nonverbal social cues, the what-do-I-mean cues. This may explain why menopausal women seem to react inappropriately. If they can’t comprehend things such as tone of voice, they are more apt to misinterpret language.”
Bellis suspects women hang onto their language-processing ability longer because of their higher levels of estrogen, which has been shown in other studies to have a positive effect on our thinking processes and which might account for the decline in women’s ability after menopause, when estrogen levels drop.
“We (audiologists) hear these gender-based complaints all the time. ‘He doesn’t listen.’ ‘She takes everything the wrong way,’ ” Bellis said. “Now we have a biological basis for these differences.”
The next time your spouse doesn’t listen or goes off the deep end over an innocent comment you made, count to 10 before you let the slow burn build up. Maybe it’s just their corpus callosum wearing out.
Edmonton-based Noel McNaughton is a sponsored speaker with the Canadian Farm Business Management Council, which will pay his fee and expenses for speaking at meetings and conventions of agricultural organizations. To book him, call 780-432-5492, email: farm@midlife-men.com or visit www.midlife-men.com.
