The cocktail party effect: a phenomenon of auditory perception.

This phenomenon of attentional management allows us to filter out unimportant auditory information.

It has happened to all of us that, while out partying and in a discotheque, we have approached someone to talk to them and, despite the hubbub, we have understood more or less what they were saying to us.

This, which seems surprising, has a name, and it happens to be closely related to the field of leisure. The cocktail party effect is the ability to differentiate between the sound we are interested in and those that may be a distraction..

This effect has its importance at an evolutionary level, and that is why it has been addressed experimentally. If you want to know more in depth what it is and what theories have tried to explain it, we invite you to continue reading this article.

What is the cocktail party effect?

The cocktail party effect is a phenomenon that consists of focusing the auditory attention on a particular acoustic stimulus, while trying to filter out and eliminate the rest of the stimuli that can act as distractors..

The name of this phenomenon is quite representative of the effect, given that, if we think about it, at a party, when we are talking to a guest, we try to filter out what he or she is telling us and ignore the music and other conversations that may be going on simultaneously, making up the background.

Thanks to this phenomenon, we are able to differentiate between the voice of the person with whom we are having the conversation and that of the other people who may be forming the acoustic background of the environment in which we are.

This same phenomenon is also what allows us, without being fully focused on other conversations, to be able to catch our attention when a word that is important to us is mentioned. attention when a word is mentioned that is important to us, such as being called by name.such as being called by name.

Neurological basis

Research has tried to find out what are the neurological bases behind the cocktail party effect. This phenomenon has a great evolutionary advantage, since it allows us to differentiate between sound stimuli that interest us from those that may act as distractors. Because of this, it is implicit that there must be some mechanism at the cerebral level that provides an explanation for this phenomenon..

Auditory attention occurs mainly in the superior temporal gyrus of the right hemisphere, where the primary auditory cortex is located. There is a whole neural network involved in the process of localizing sounds coming from the environment. This network, which is frontoparietal, includes the inferior frontal gyrus, superior parietal sulcus and intraparietal sulcus. These areas are involved in attentional switching, speech processing, and attentional control.

The cocktail party effect works when the person has full functionality of both ears.. In other words, for this phenomenon to occur properly, it is necessary for the person to have binaural hearing in good condition. Having two ears makes it possible to locate up to two sound sources in a satisfactory manner, in addition to attributing distance and acoustic properties to them.

Theories of attention

Not all acoustic information to which a person may be exposed is processed by the brain. Multiple theories have been proposed to try to explain why, in an environment where multiple sound stimuli are presented, we are able to distinguish between what interests us and what constitutes the background.

In the following we will see some of the most important we will see some of the most important proposals that have tried to explain the phenomenon of the cello party effect. the cocktail party effect phenomenon:

1. Broadbent

Donald Broadbent, in several experiments with dichotic listening, observed that participants were more likely to rememberBroadbent, observed that participants were more likely to remember those sound stimuli to which they had consciously paid attention compared to those to which they had not.

For example, if they were given two headphones and asked to pay more attention to what was heard over one of the two, participants typically said exactly the same thing they had heard over one of the two speakers.

Based on this, Broadbent proposed that attention, and in this case auditory attention, had a kind of filter, i.e., we consciously select what we want to hear from what we do not want to pay attention to.that is, we consciously select what we want to hear among what we do not want to pay attention to.

The way this filter works would be as follows: first, the information enters the brain through the ear and associated nerves, then it is stored in the sensory memory so that, later, we pay conscious attention to it and select what interests us.

Before the information is processed, the filter mechanism only lets the information that is important pass on to higher processes. Once this is done, it passes to the working memory, where it will be used for the conversation you are having or, if you are paying attention to something, it will be stored in long-term memory.

Later, however, Gray and Wedderburn overturned Broadbent's model. They conducted an experiment with dichoptic listening as well, only this one had some peculiarities. Participants were made to listen in one ear to the following phrase 'Dear, one, Jane', while in the other ear they heard 'three, Aunt, six'. Participants recalled hearing a mixture of both phrases, with 'Dear Aunt Jane' being the most common instead of the numbers.

2. Treisman

Anne Treisman posited the attenuation model. This model argues that information, once it has passed through filters, is not completely blocked, unlike Broadbent's model.

Instead of being completely ignored, uninteresting information is attenuated, i.e., it loses strength, but is still there. This means that, through an oversight or a distractor, it can subsequently be passed on to higher attentional processes.

To better understand this idea: if we are talking to someone at a party, it is normal that we do not pay attention to what other people are saying. But, But if someone mentions our name, even though we weren't paying attention at first, we are likely to turn around and see who said it. and see who said it. This is because our name, no matter how attenuated it is among the background noises, is something that has great meaning for us.

3. Kahneman

Finally, in Daniel Kahneman's model for auditory attention, we can notice a difference with respect to the previous models. Unlike Broadbent, Kahneman does not speak in terms of filters but in terms of capacity. Attention is seen as a resource that has to be a resource that has to be distributed among various stimuli..

Attention is more efficient the better the person's arousal, i.e., if the person is low in energy and concentration, his or her attention will also be lower.

This means that the more tired a person is, the less likely it is that the cocktail party effect will occur, causing the person to have serious difficulties to efficiently discern between the conversation he/she is having and the rest of the acoustic stimuli.

Cocktail party effect and hearing loss

The cocktail party effect only occurs if you have binaural hearing, i.e. you hear correctly in both ears. People who suffer from some form of deafness, whether total or partial, will have significant difficulty locating sound sources in space, as well as distinguishing between what their conversational partner is saying and sounds coming from the background.

For this reason, it is it is common for people with impaired hearing to have more difficulty discriminating between background noiseThey are more distracted by the interferences that may be in the environment, in addition to not attending satisfactorily to the conversation they are having.

It is for this reason that common situations such as going out to a party in a noisy place or a family reunion, in which several conversations can take place at the same time, are really frustrating situations for those who suffer from some kind of hearing impairment. They find it difficult to focus their auditory attention to the stimulus they really want to hear.

Bibliographical references:

• Broadbent, D.E. (1954). "The role of auditory localization in attention and memory span". Journal of Experimental Psychology. 47 (3): 191–196. doi:10.1037/h0054182.
• Gray J.A.; Wedderburn A.A.I. (1960). "Grouping strategies with simultaneous stimuli". Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology. 12 (3): 180–184. doi:10.1080/17470216008416722. Archived from the original on 2015-01-08. Retrieved 2013-07-21.
• Kahneman, D. (1973). Attention and effort. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.
• Bronkhorst, A.W. (2015) The cocktail-party problem revisited: early processing and selection of multi-talker speech. Atten Percept Psychophys. 77(5): p. 1465-87.
• Toth, B., et al. (2019) Attention and speech-processing related functional brain networks activated in a multi-speaker environment. PLoS One. 14(2): p. e0212754.
• Treisman, Anne M. (1969). "Strategies and models of selective attention". Psychological Review. 76 (3): 282–299. doi:10.1037