When women speak at length, men tend to tune them out. The experience has happened to each of us women, I think, and now a British study may have a partial answer.

Female voices are more complex than male voices [going along with their more complex thoughts?] and the increased complexity makes men's brains work harder to decode the message. Rather than put the effort into listening and understanding, men just tune out.

The shape and size of female vocal cords and larynx lead women to speak with a greater range of sound frequencies than men. Women also have more natural melody in their voices. Listening to female voices activates the auditory center of a man's brain, which must analyze the different sounds at the same time he's interpreting the words.

I suspect that men do not have enough brain power, parallel processing capability, to do both at once.

Men process other male voices in a different portion of the brain.

The study also helps explain why auditory hallucinations are generally only male voices. [And it may explain why god is perceived as male, by male priests and power brokers.] British researcher Michael Hunter explains, "The brain would find it much harder to create a false female voice accurately than a false male voice."

So the tendency, in a problematic situation, for women to speak higher and faster may be counter-productive. I wonder if it would help to speak in a lower, slower voice in stressful situations to help men overcome their listening disability and thus their attention deficit.