Talk:Cocktail party effect

Wikipedia Ambassador Program assignment
This article was the subject of an educational assignment at Western University supported by the Wikipedia Ambassador Program&#32;during the 2012 Q1 term. Further details are available on the course page.

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Wikipedia Ambassador Program assignment
This article is the subject of an educational assignment at Davidson College supported by WikiProject Psychology and the Wikipedia Ambassador Program&#32;during the 2013 Q1 term. Further details are available on the course page.

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Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment
This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 7 January 2019 and 26 April 2019. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): ScarlettRidley. Peer reviewers: Madihuddleston, Alexyoung339.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 17:55, 16 January 2022 (UTC)

Other sources
I believe the sources the author used are not very confident. If one knows only a little about the cocktail party effect one can still see that research did not stop after Broadbent and that the cocktail party effect is probably one of the best understood paradigms in cognitive psychology.

I am afraid I do not have the time to correct it (and my English is not good enough to write an article), but there definitly are at least four parts that have to be integrated:
 * 1) Neville Moray's experimental results. Moray found that Broadbents Filter Theory had to be revised as one could pay attention to another source if it was important enough. When the subject shadowed a message it could still hear parts of the other message such as his on name.
 * 2) Anne Treisman's Attenuation Theory which seemed to be a better explanation than Broadbent's theory. It works like a siv rather than a filter.
 * 3) Deutsch & Deutsch's Late Selection Theory. Broadbent's and Treisman's theories were early selection theories. The "bottleneck" (due to limited capacity) came early in lower cognitive mechanisms. Deutsch & Deutsch proposed that the "bottleneck" came later, in higher cognitive mechanisms, viz. the short-term memory.
 * 4) Later it came to a controverse between Treisman an Deutsch & Deutsch: Is selection early or late? Johnston & Heinz (1978) proposed that both were right. An alternative model was proposed by Lavie (1995) which terms that the "perceptual load plays a causal role in determining the efficiency of selective attention."

Without any of these additions, this article does not reflect what it should.

Unisono01 (you can find me at wikipedia.de)

Parallels in vision
I've noticed, by experimentation after my interest's arousal one boring day, that much the same situation as the Cocktail Party Effect occurs with the eyes. I focus on an object in the center of my vision, as is normal, and hold a hand up at the very corner of my vision. I find it impossible to truly comprehend my hand beyond the fact of its presence without tearing my vision away from the center. I can tell when there is motion, and can count the fingers on my hand by noticing five movements when individually opening each finger, but my mind can't process counting five open fingers, even if my hand is only a third of my vision away from the center.


 * The effect you describe sounds very similar to the Cocktail Party effect. Indeed, you can concentrate your vision on your fingers in the periphery without fixating. So your attention does not necessarily have to be paired with your focus of vision. Normally, the reason why you can't see your hand acute, is not an attention phenomenon. It has rather to do with your eyes ability to see clear in the periphery of your eyes. In the centre of your focus, your eyes have a much better resolution, but you normally do not notice it. See, if you can find an article about the organisation of the mammal's eye.
 * Unisono01


 * It is my understanding via sources I do not recall easily that human vision is split into two areas: the primary focal area and the peripheral vision. The primary focal area is very sensitive to details and color, where as the peripheral is less so but much more sensitive to contrast and motion.  As such we can easily detect specific subjects in our peripheral, but must look (almost) directly at them to clearly identify them.


 * Mark of chesterfamily dot org.

I corrected some of the grammar and tried to even out the writing, but in some instances, I don't know enough to make corrections.


 * 1. You refer to Arons without telling us his full name or a full citation to his work outside the internet.
 * 2. Maybe the citations should be in footnotes, rather than in the text, as the casual reader won't be particularly interested in original the sources.
 * 3. Is it Broadbend or Broadbent?  Both spellings appear.
 * 4. You refer to "dichotic listening experiments," but the non-expert won't know what that means.


 * OK, I've fixed all of these problems, apart from number 4 which was already resolved by linking to the article on dichotic listening. --mcld 12:04, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

Beyond the one included reference, is there any further information addressing potential correlates between the Cocktail party effect and the mentioned similar visual phenomena? While I've found several primary articles on Google Scholar and the like, are there any secondary sources that make this correlation? The one included - and any others I have found externally - appear to be primary journal articles. I can't shake the feeling that the idea is unsubstantiated by what is included here alone.Justin.Hortin (talk) 03:46, 7 May 2020 (UTC)

Effectively Broken External Link
The external link to "Theories of percption" requires a username and password. Will the person who posted it please provide some other method of access that works? otherwise, this should be removed. http://web.isp.cz/jcrane/IB/Theories_of_Perception.pdf -billy drexel

I searched for this link, and it looks like it's been deleted. Toridel (talk) 16:42, 17 October 2019 (UTC)

not for me/research?
I don't seem to experience this effect very much. On the contrary, I often have problems to hear what other people are saying when there is much background noise. This gives me many problems when attending parties, social events or simply goint to clubs/discotheques. Is there any research about people not having this filter or where it is not as effective? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 210.225.86.130 (talk) 01:27, 6 February 2008 (UTC)

Treisman 1960
What is Treisman (1960)?

It seems that perhaps this citation (not in the bibliography) was pasted from the Milton webpage, which is listed here as an external reference. That page also does not contain the citation in its bibliography (although it is peppered with references to Treisman (1960)). Looking at the bibliography of Goldstein's cognitive psychology textbook, two potentially relevant citations may be:

Treisman, A.M. (1964a) Selective attention in man. British Medical Bulletin, 20, 12–16.

Treisman, A.M. (1964b) Contextual cues in selective listening. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 12, 242–245.

(I don't have those papers handy or time to examine them or to check into what the the "real" Treisman 1960 may be.) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Sbump (talk • contribs) 23:28, 22 September 2008 (UTC)

Relation to fatigue and or depression?
Subjectively, the effect seems to go away when I'm either very tired or in one of my major-depressive bouts. Is there any research on this? If so, please add this info. -- 92.229.120.248 (talk) 01:18, 30 April 2010 (UTC)

You will have to look at Auditory Processing Disorder (APD) research. the "cocktail party effect" is one subtype of APD, regarding dichotic listening. APD is about having problems processing what you hear, or having a listening disability. dolfrog (talk) 01:57, 30 April 2010 (UTC)

Effect in music
If there's a source, we could mention that the same thing happens when listening to music. You can choose to pick out certain instruments in a song to the exclusion of others. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 173.164.218.92 (talk) 16:36, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

Improvement of this article
In the next month, I will be performing a series of edits on this article in hopes of improving its clarity, content, and quality of resources as part of the APS Wikipedia Initiative.RoconnorUWO (talk) 02:02, 13 March 2012 (UTC)

I have made a number of changes in this article, including a rewording of the article's introduction, as well as the inclusion of two subsections: "Models of attention" and "Visual correlates," each with a combined total of 15 new references added to the reflist. I also included two new images, one depicting Kahneman's capacity model and the other depicting a comparison of some selection models. I chose to leave the sections on Monaural and Binaural hearing alone, as detailed discussion of that was largely outside the range of my research. To view only the sections that I myself have included in this article, including references, please visit my user sandbox. RoconnorUWO (talk) 18:09, 10 April 2012 (UTC)

Selective Attention Edits and Additions
We will be doing a series of edits on this page as part of our Cognitive Psychology Class. We intend to add a section on the effect of emotions (fear, anger, perception of ugliness) and stimuli (language, personal names, categories, and chaos) on selective attention. In addition, we hope to clean up any vocabulary on this page that is unclear and add citations where needed. Below is an outline of what we intend the page to look like:

Frdevine (talk) 01:44, 20 February 2013 (UTC)

Frdevine (talk) 04:01, 17 February 2013 (UTC)
 * Hi Frdevine! All sources you mention are WP:primary sources, that is, results of single studies. In order to know if the results of these studies really represent encyclopedic information, you need to know if the results have been peer-reviewed and replicated. For that, you need WP:secondary sources, such as reviews (however, the introduction of a primary source can be a review-like, when the authors discuss numerous results of earlier studies). So please, reconsider your choice of journals and use secondary sources instead!  Lova Falk     talk   08:43, 17 February 2013 (UTC)

They are all peer-reviewed articles. Frdevine (talk) 21:53, 17 February 2013 (UTC)
 * My mistake! I should not have used the expression peer-reviewed. The main problem is that they are primary sources. Please use secondary or tertiary sources instead. I can recommend reading WP:MEDRS for a better understanding of which sources to use in Wikipedia.  Lova Falk     talk   09:52, 19 February 2013 (UTC)

In addition to those five sources, my partner and I intend to use


 * Dennis, Paul A.; Amy Halberstadt (Jan 2013). "Is believing seeing? The role of emotion-related beliefs in selective attention to affective cues.". Cognition and Emotion 27 (1): 3-20. doi:10.1080/02699931.2012.680578.
 * Shapiro, K.L.; J.Caldwell & R. E. Sorensen. "Personal names and the attentional blink: A visual 'cocktail party' effect.". Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance 23 (2): 504-514. doi:10.1037/0096-1523.23.2.504. Retrieved 14 February 2013.
 * Ward, Robert; Ronnie Ward (Oct. 2008). "Selective Attention and Control of Action : Comparative Psychology of an Artificial, Evolved Agent and People". Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance 34 (5): 1165-1182. doi:10.1037/0096-1523.34.5.1165.
 * Reel, L; C. Hicks (2012). "Selective auditory attention in adults: Effects of rhythmic structure of the competing language.". Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research 55 (1): 89-104. doi:10.1044/1092-4388(2011/10-0193).
 * ShinWoo, Kim; Bob Rehder (May 2011). "How prior knowledge affects selective attention during category learning: An eyetracking study.". Memory & Cognition 39 (4): 649-665. doi:10.3758/s13421-010-0050-3. Retrieved 14 February 2013.

Maleonard (talk) 02:15, 18 February 2013 (UTC)Maleonard
 * Hi Maleonard! All sources you mention are WP:primary sources, that is, results of single studies. However, Wikipedia is not an academic paper or essay! Wikipedia articles  should be based on reliable, published secondary sources  (for instance, reviews) and, to a lesser extent, on tertiary sources (such as professional or advanced academic textbooks -i.e. not undergraduate introductory textbooks). WP:MEDRS describes how to identify reliable sources for medical information, which is a good guideline for many psychology articles as well. So please, reconsider your choice of journals and use secondary sources instead!   Lova Falk     talk   10:15, 19 February 2013 (UTC)

Comment to Frdevine
Hi Frdevine! The three sources that you just added are all WP:primary sources, that is, results of single studies. However, and once more, Wikipedia is not an academic paper or essay! Wikipedia articles should be based on reliable, published secondary sources (for instance, journal reviews and professional or advanced academic textbooks) and, to a lesser extent, on tertiary sources (such as undergraduate textbooks). WP:MEDRS describes how to identify reliable sources for medical information, which is a good guideline for many psychology articles as well. So please, reconsider your choice of sources and use secondary sources instead! With friendly regards,  Lova Falk     talk   07:56, 25 February 2013 (UTC)

Comments
I have to say that I was skeptic when I came to this article since I had to remind several of your classmates not to use primary sources. However, while you have added some primary sources you have also found several high quality secondary sources. I would recommend to stick to these secondary sources, and in any case where you want to add a primary source per historical reasons (a seminal work in the field) try to add both: the primary and another more recent secondary source backing up the primary source and putting it into context.

Nevertheless I have reverted your addition to the monoaural section. You can not back up content on how human attention works with a primary source from a machine simulation in an engineering journal such as IEEE. This is the perfect example why secondary sources should be used. It is clear to give undue weight to a work that probably does not merit it.

Bests.--Garrondo (talk) 15:35, 21 March 2013 (UTC)

Would it be possible to include something about the lack of accommodation for those with limited directional hearing? For example, during presentations in the workplace, audience members have side conversations, and get loud smartphone notifications. This study found a high percentage of workers over 45 have hearing difficulties: https://www.omicsonline.org/abstract/screening-of-presbycusis-in-the-workplace-and-identification-of-environmental-factors — Preceding unsigned comment added by 73.162.7.187 (talk) 05:52, 1 August 2017 (UTC)

Changes to Selective Attention page
Thank you Garrondo and Lova Falk for helping Frdevine and I through our process to clean up the page. We have been trying to take your advice about the sources, but we have to say, it is very difficult to change our mindset from scholarly articles to "wikipedia worthy" review articles. Since this is part of a class project, we have been trying to honor the wishes of wikipedia while also trying to add insightful information about the selective attention. We have used the following sources, many of them reviews or books, to clean up and organize the page. We also added a section about the stimuli that intrude awareness/attention.

Note to Peer Review Editors
When peer-reviewing this article please look into the history and look at the corrections that were made to the Early Work and Binaural Processing. We also added a new section titled: Stimuli that Intrude Awareness and organized the Models of Attention Section. Under Monaural Processing there are citation needed tags. We found citations for those, but other reviewers on this page deleted them because they were not secondary sources. We have tried to find secondary sources for that topic, but have been unsuccessful in doing so.

Thanks, maleonard frdevine (talk) (talk) 13:56 22 March 2013 —Preceding undated comment added 17:57, 22 March 2013 (UTC)

Image and other changes
I have eliminated the image in the article. It seems original research by a previous student in which he tried to summarize from his/her point of view the different models. Unless such a scheme is explicitely stated in a reliable secondary source (and then we would probably have copyright problems) to include it in the article is WP:OR.

On the other hand I have eliminated the tags on the articles, since they do not apply anymore. The recent elimination of some of the content was probably a good idea, since it was not clear the integration in the current article.

As I stated above the main problem right now is that the no-use of secondary sources has lead to a succession of descriptions of primary article methods and results, with no clear reasoning on why are they important (or if even they are important). This is not an encyclopedic tone... However I feel that right now there is not much hope of this being fixed (I would be very happy to be wrong...)

Other possible improvements: the article is greatly underlinked: many more technical or important terms should be linked. As a hint: probably any concept that a 14-years old student does not understand should be wikilinked.

--Garrondo (talk) 14:55, 12 April 2013 (UTC)

PET info eliminated
Functional neuroimaging (either PET or fMRI) are exploratory techiques due to their spatial and temporal resolution, number of statistical comparisons performed, limitations in task designing and other. In this sense to claim anything from a single study is way too bold. I have eliminated the info, but moved it here since it may give some hints to look for secondary sources summarizing the estate of the art regarding brain activation and attention.

--Garrondo (talk) 14:41, 19 April 2013 (UTC)

''It has been suggested in brain imaging studies using PET that a variety of brain areas may be involved in selectively processing visual linguistic material (i.e. word form), including the inferior prefrontal and posterior insular cortices, the amygdala, caudate nucleus, and several areas of temporal cortex. It is currently unknown if these same brain areas are implicated in focusing attention for other visual or auditory stimuli.''

Further reading eliminated
It only had 2 peer-reviewed articles which in case that were really that interesting (I do not think they actually were) should be added as inline citations to the article. Citations were:



--Garrondo (talk) 21:04, 1 May 2013 (UTC)

Adding wiki links
As Garrondo mentioned, the page seems to be under-linked. I've added links to sensory memory, inferior frontal gyrus, intraparietal sulcus, speech processing, and fMRI. I also fixed links to superior temporal gyrus & binaural unmasking as they weren't linking in the first mention of the terms.

I'll add more links as I go through the page!

ScarlettRidley (talk) 22:05, 30 January 2019 (UTC)

Peer Review
Scarlett,

Thank you for your contributions to this article. One of the most critical aspects of Wikipedia is the ability for users to pursue a more in-depth perspective of what they are reading by clicking on a term that has its own Wikipedia article. By adding WikiLinks to several key neuroanatomy terms, you have done just that. One thing I wouldn't mind seeing added is a section on the Cocktail Party Effect in people with hearing impairments; as someone who has moderate-to-severe hearing loss and wears hearing aids to parties, I am curious about the strength or weakness of this effect in other people with similar impairments. This article somewhat relates to my article on chunking in that they both include insight into how attention and working memory influence how our brains sort and prioritize incoming stimuli.

Keep up the good work!

Alexyoung339 (talk) 01:11, 18 February 2019 (UTC)

Personal experience
I was once taking codeine for a toothache, and one of the most noticeable side effects was that I could not separate the different voices in a crowded room. Does anyone know of research examining the effect of opiates on selective attention? When I can find the time, I will try to look into this, but if you know a good source, please let us know.

Thanks, Fcy (talk) 01:24, 8 July 2020 (UTC)

Independent Component Analysis
Independent Component Analysis (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Independent_component_analysis) is one of the classic algorithms for solving the cocktail party problem. Why isn't it mentioned in this article? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2001:44B8:272:5700:A8:62AB:659A:7490 (talk) 08:23, 4 October 2020 (UTC)

Wiki Education assignment: Human Cognition SP23
— Assignment last updated by Annann789 (talk) 20:13, 6 April 2023 (UTC)