Brain chemistry makes women safer

A DIFFERENCE in the way women’s brains work may explain why they have fewer accidents behind the wheel than men.

Insurance companies recognise women as safer drivers and adjust their premiums accordingly.

Men, on the other hand, pride themselves at being the superior sex when it comes to parking and reading maps.

Sex hormones could be the reason for their different abilities, scientists believe.

A study by researchers at the University of Bradford found women are significantly better than men at shifting concentration.

This is not the same as multitasking, which involves dealing with more than one job at the same time.

The scientists looked at how well people could switch from one task to another after having their attention “fixed.”

Researcher Amarylis Fox said: “Women seem to realise they are being asked to do something new much more quickly than men.

“Men tend to just blindly carry on with the original task. It was really quite significant. Basically, women were twice as good at realising they had to change tasks as men. The results were strikingly different.”

Ms Fox said the findings had important implications for the way men and women behave in real life.

They may help explain why women are considered safer drivers. Women behind the wheel were likely to be quicker to switch focus to deal with an unexpected event - such as a car pulling out in front of them, or a blown out tyre.

Ms Fox said: “Men are supposed to be better at spatial tasks, such as parking. The male hormone testosterone is supposed to aid spatial awareness. But insurance companies still think women are less risky on the road.

“There must be a lot of different factors at play, but it could be hypothesised that being able to switch attention between different things while driving is obviously going to help.

“It’s especially true when driving on a motorway, which can be very dull and tedious. Your mind tends to get stuck on the same track. Our test, in its limited way, shows women in that kind of situation can change their train of thought faster.”

Just as testosterone boosts spatial judgement in men, oestrogen may be responsible for the attention-switching ability of women, said Ms Fox.

Previous research has shown women show sharp improvements in certain mental tasks when their oestrogen level peak, for instance at specific times in the menstrual cycle.

The experiment involved 43 men and women who were asked to respond to images flashed up on a computer screen. After repeatedly pressing a button in response to one shape, they suddenly had to switch to another “target”, for instance a triangle.

The biggest challenge came when volunteers unexpectedly had to re-route attention away from shapes to a zig-zag pattern which previously they had ignored. They were strongly tempted to keep responding to the earlier shape.