User:TheBrapHeardAroundTheWorld/Evaluate an Article

`Which article are you evaluating?
Cocktail party effect

Why you have chosen this article to evaluate?
I chose this article because I noticed that it was on the "C Grade" articles list for psychology and I thought the title was intriguing. I read further and saw it was about how individuals are able to tune out other stimulus in order to focus on a single one. I looked at the talk page and noticed that there were multiple comments on the talk page discussing this article's credibility and writing.

Evaluate the article
Lead:

After skimming through the entire article and reading the lead paragraph, I have noticed that it doesn't cover fully what is talked about in the article. It doesn't talk about the various perspectives different psychologists have on the topic as well as about its occurrence in animals (both of which are emphasized in the following article). I also noticed that it has used more focused vocabulary that isn't familiar to a layman such as "Neurotypical" and "pertinent". I feel that use of these words are not in line with the central mission of Wikipedia of making it easy to understand for everyone.

Content: The section titled "More recent work" is especially problematic. Not only is the title vague, but the section opens by stating principles and findings that recent research has brought. However it fails to detail when the research was conducted or who it was conducted by. The section says nothing about the research that was done despite it being titled "More recent work". Even more problematic, in the last paragraph of this section, the article talks about recent research that has been done on the topic and even names researchers who conducted this research, but it fails to detail exactly what they have contributed to the understanding of this phenomenon.

Tone and Balance: This article seems to attempt to state all the ideas and viewpoints regarding this topic. However it does give detailed information on the research that was conducted back in the 1950's, however it proves to be more vague when talking about more recent research, only detailing the findings from the research and not the actual research itself.

Sources and References: This article does cite it sources where necessary however it should be noted that there are only two out of the thirty-six sources that are more recent than five years old. While having older sources is necessary when detailing the history of the research and understanding the evolution of the current understanding, it seems that there could be more emphasis current research.

Organization and Quality: This article at times seems hard to follow, at times the article talks about the research that was done on the topic and then suddenly moves to the principles and ideas regarding the phenomenon. There is little organization in regards to the "More recent work" section of the article. More information can be added to this section and it can be possibly divided into a "timeline" of research.

Images: There is only one image present in the entire article that shows people at a cocktail party. I feel that pictures such as graphs, brain scans, or photos of studies (if possible) would help a reader understand the topic.

Discussion Page: There seems to be discussions regarding the credibility of certain sources in the article. There are also discussions about adding certain topics to the article and how it might benefit the overall message of the article. It seems that the most activity on this talk page was done back in 2013, however this article has been worked on by Wiki Edu students back in January 2023.

Overall: Overall, this article has strong information and cites credible sources, however this article is underdeveloped in how it describes the phenomenon. This article is in need of more simple phrasing, more information regarding the recent research on the topic, and graphics that detail the research that has been done on the topic. I think that further research and better organization will vastly improve this article.