The Cocktail party effect

  COCKTAIL PARTY EFFECT ......

Evolution resulted in the sustainability of species that are still existing on earth from thousands of years.One of the examples of species which shows the beauty of evolution is human.From cage to a house, from wheel to car, from fire to electricity etc are some of the examples of human evolution. Human slowly started understanding and observing it's surrounding. Learning, understanding, knowledge helps in new ideas of innovation and to protect themselves from other threats. It improves with time. These are called the Cognitive processes.Our brain rushes with different Cognitive processes. So one of the phenomena we will discuss it here through example. Suppose you visited your friend’s pool party and you had a chit chat with them on a glass of champagne and suddenly you heard your name in a noisy room. And you start figuring out the source of origin. So your whole attention from your friend’s conversation to someone conversation had shifted because you heard your name in another conversation.

However, you will likely notice somebody saying your name in another conversation even if you were not listening intently to that conversation.

 Our ability to focus on one out of many voices is one of the most striking phenomena in cognitive psychology, and is known as the “cocktail party effect.” Studied by the researchers from the University of California, San Francisco. Cognitive processes are continuously taking place in your mind and in the minds of others. Listening to teacher discussing an interesting topic of your choice in a noisy class is also an example of cocktail party effect.This effect also called as selective attention. This attention enhances once you learn languages and develop a strong vocabulary with time. Selective attention varies from ages to ages.Like children in their teen or infancy have stronger selective attention compared to adults. Taboo words are also responsible to see the cocktail effect. But this case is an exception in children until they develop a strong vocabulary. 

It was also observed that our brain give attention to some specific words rather than other common ones. There is an algorithm which runs behind this mechanism which includes the frequency of each word. Words which you were searching in past and someone somehow used that word so you suddenly gave attention to that person by filtering out the other conversation. People with only one functioning ear seem much more distracted by interfering noise than people with two typical ears.

References

• www.google.com
• Stenberg.J, Robert & Sternberg, Karin, The Cognitive psychology,6th edition.