The cocktail party effect with conversational speech

James W. Kondash; Robert H. Gilkey; Scott K. Isabelle; Brian D. Simpson

doi:10.1121/1.424902

Auditory Event Related Potentials Capture the Cocktail Party Effect

PsycEXTRA Dataset ◽

10.1037/e683152011-468 ◽

2011 ◽

Author(s):

Masu Omura ◽

Colin R. Harbke ◽

Jacob K. Nelson ◽

Brandon M. Wright ◽

Derek R. Haggard ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Event Related Potentials ◽

Cocktail Party ◽

Auditory Event ◽

Cocktail Party Effect ◽

Related Potentials ◽

Auditory Event Related Potentials

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Acute alcohol intoxication and the cocktail party problem: do “mocktails” help or hinder?

Psychopharmacology ◽

10.1007/s00213-021-05924-6 ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

Alistair J. Harvey ◽

C. Philip Beaman

Keyword(s):

Working Memory ◽

Memory Span ◽

Alcohol Intoxication ◽

Alcoholic Beverage ◽

Cognitive Capacity ◽

Cocktail Party ◽

Primary Input ◽

Cocktail Party Problem ◽

Null Effect ◽

Cocktail Party Effect

Abstract Rationale To test the notion that alcohol impairs auditory attentional control by reducing the listener’s cognitive capacity. Objectives We examined the effect of alcohol consumption and working memory span on dichotic speech shadowing and the cocktail party effect—the ability to focus on one of many simultaneous speakers yet still detect mention of one’s name amidst the background speech. Alcohol was expected either to increase name detection, by weakening the inhibition of irrelevant speech, or reduce name detection, by restricting auditory attention on to the primary input channel. Low-span participants were expected to show larger drug impairments than high-span counterparts. Methods On completion of the working memory span task, participants (n = 81) were randomly assigned to an alcohol or placebo beverage treatment. After alcohol absorption, they shadowed speech presented to one ear while ignoring the synchronised speech of a different speaker presented to the other. Each participant’s first name was covertly embedded in to-be-ignored speech. Results The “cocktail party effect” was not affected by alcohol or working memory span, though low-span participants made more shadowing errors and recalled fewer words from the primary channel than high-span counterparts. Bayes factors support a null effect of alcohol on the cocktail party phenomenon, on shadowing errors and on memory for either shadowed or ignored speech. Conclusion Findings suggest that an alcoholic beverage producing a moderate level of intoxication (M BAC ≈ 0.08%) neither enhances nor impairs the cocktail party effect.

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Multichannel acoustic source and image dataset for the cocktail party effect in hearing aid and implant users

Scientific Data ◽

10.1038/s41597-020-00777-8 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 7 (1) ◽

Author(s):

Tim Fischer ◽

Marco Caversaccio ◽

Wilhelm Wimmer

Keyword(s):

Hearing Aids ◽

Scientific Community ◽

Cocktail Party ◽

Acoustic Source ◽

Image Dataset ◽

Cocktail Party Effect ◽

Spatial Coordinates ◽

Acoustic Chamber ◽

Human Hearing ◽

Human Sense

AbstractThe Cocktail Party Effect refers to the ability of the human sense of hearing to extract a specific target sound source from a mixture of background noises in complex acoustic scenarios. The ease with which normal hearing people perform this challenging task is in stark contrast to the difficulties that hearing-impaired subjects face in these situations. To help patients with hearing aids and implants, scientists are trying to imitate this ability of human hearing, with modest success so far. To support the scientific community in its efforts, we provide the Bern Cocktail Party (BCP) dataset consisting of 55938 Cocktail Party scenarios recorded from 20 people and a head and torso simulator wearing cochlear implant audio processors. The data were collected in an acoustic chamber with 16 synchronized microphones placed at purposeful positions on the participants’ heads. In addition to the multi-channel audio source and image recordings, the spatial coordinates of the microphone positions were digitized for each participant. Python scripts were provided to facilitate data processing.

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The acoustic phenomenon of ‘cocktail party’

SoundEffects - An Interdisciplinary Journal of Sound and Sound Experience ◽

10.7146/se.v3i3.18440 ◽

2013 ◽

Vol 3 (3) ◽

pp. 46-60

Author(s):

Nikos Bubaris

Keyword(s):

Public Space ◽

Political Activity ◽

Cocktail Party ◽

Written Text ◽

The Public ◽

Cocktail Party Effect ◽

Social Communicative ◽

Acoustic Experience ◽

Acoustic Phenomenon

The term ‘cocktail party effect’ derives from acoustics and refers to the possibility to distinguish the voice of a particular speaker amid the noisy confusion produced by a plethora of overlapping voices and conversations. In this article I propose a conceptual elaboration of the term by considering the acoustic phenomenon in question, both literally and metaphorically, as one of the most characteristic conditions shaping contemporary collective and acoustic experience in environments overloaded with information. In the first part, I discuss the conditionsthat give rise to the cocktail party acoustic phenomenon, as they relate to particular types of social, communicative and listening practices. In the second part, I present a case study of the phenomenon based on the creation of a soundscape composition developed in conjunction with a written text, both occasioned by the political activity in the public space of the Syntagma Square in Athens during the summer of 2011.

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