Gender Differences in the Content of Cognitive Distraction During Sex‪.‬

Researchers investigating the cognitive processing of sexual stimuli have reported consistent gender differences (see Geer & Manguno-Mire, 1996, for a review) that may inform the differential role of distraction in the sexual arousal of men and women. For example, sexual content-induced delay (slower response in identifying stimuli when an erotic element is present) is longer in women. Men are also faster and more accurate in memory for sexual information and have a more complex organization of knowledge for sexually-oriented words, while women have a more complex organization of relationship-oriented words. The extent to which these differences relate to distraction is unknown. They might, however, suggest a gender difference in distractibility within the context of sexual situations. Women's hesitation in identifying erotic content, relative memory under-performance for sexual information, and less complex organization of explicit sexual information could all indicate a sexual focus more easily shifted than that of men. Distraction and Sexual Arousal