According to Swiss researchers, women are better equipped than men to combine several tasks … But only until menopause.
Could it be a story of hormones? Women would be better equipped to multitask. Talking and texting while walking. Nothing too bad, a priori, but this kind of combination would cause more problems for men. A controversial idea in the scientific community, which is struggling to agree on the subject.
To verify this hypothesis, researchers from the University of Zurich invented an experiment in which volunteers had to perform a Stroot test while walking on a treadmill. The test consists of a series of words describing a color, written in a different color: the word “green” is for example red, the “yellow” is blue … The test subjects must say aloud the color, not the color. text.
Young women perform better
As they performed the test while walking, the right arm’s swinging motion tended to lose some of its amplitude, and of its symmetry to the left arm. The cognitive task requested is simple, but requires concentration. It mobilizes part of the capacities of the left hemisphere of the brain, and thus interferes with the movements of the right arm.
The observations do not end there. The researchers also noticed that this interference depends on age and sex. In men, for all participants aged 18 to 80, the ability to combine the two actions seems identical. But in young women, it seems better: the movement of the right arm is less affected by the test. Women would therefore be better at multitasking, but only when they are young!
An observation which leads the researchers to formulate the hypothesis according to which this aptitude would be improved by estrogen. It does indeed seem to disappear after menopause. This hypothesis opens the doors to hormonal treatments, which could help the elderly whose gait is hesitant, and thus limit falls.
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