Have you ever been to a crowded stadium such as a sporting event, where you were able to carry on a conversation with someone among all the noise? There is a reason for this. Your ability to focus on the one conversation you want to hear and tune out everything else is part of the selective attention, known as the cocktail party effect. The ability to focus on one stimulus while filtering out other stimuli (Goldstein, 88) was coined in 1953 by English cognitive scientist Colin Cherry. He said, “It takes our ears and brain time to process what the other person’s voice is saying against the background noise” (Cherry, 1953) This effect refers to our ability to focus intensely in on one conversation at the same time as you tune everything else out.
According to Melville J. Wohlgemuth, the lead author and a postdoctoral fellow in the Krieger School of Arts and Sciences’ Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, states that, “With so many stimuli in the world, the brain needs a filter to determine what’s important,” Wohlgemuth along with Cynthia F. Moss, a Johns Hopkins professor and neuroscientist, decided to figure out which sounds would be considered “important” enough to evoke responses from neurons that are involved in orienting behaviors, such as turning towards a sound.
To demonstrate the ability of selective attention, Wohlgemuth and Moss performed a research experiment using five brown bats. They played a variety of sounds while monitoring their midbrain activity. Such sounds as recordings of natural chirps, which are the actual sounds bats make when they hunt. Along with artificial white noise and sounds between the two extremes. All the sounds were identical in amplitude, duration, and bandwidth.
In turn, the study showed bats could hear all the noises but certain neurons in their brains screened out everything except for the chirp echoes. As a result, the bats were able to exclude all the extra noise and ignore the distractions and fly in the right direction to find food.
In conclusion, since all mammals share a basic brain organization, it’s likely that our brains work in the same way. With so many sounds in the world, the brain can decide which one gets your attention.
References:
Goldstein, E. Bruce (2017). Cognitive Psychology: Connecting Mind, Research, and Everyday Experience. Stamford, CT: Cengage Learning page, 88.
http://releases.jhu.edu/category/academic-disciplines/psychology/
February 23, 2016 Tags: attention, bats, brain science, Cynthia F. Moss, Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, Johns Hopkins University, Krieger School of Arts and Sciences
Posted in Natural Sciences, Psychology
Chelsea,
It is interesting to read about the ability of these bats to filter out the sounds that were important to hear from the unimportant. It is actually understood that humans do this exact thing. Depending on interest and motivation of the individual this process is said to occur. There is an extensive list of evidence which supports that selective attention is governed by our arousal level. When thinking of an instance where this occurred personally, I thought of myself at a restaurant with loud chatter in the background. How I was able to filter out all the conversations around me in order to hear the conversation at my table showed this process. I was uninterested in the conversations around me and only in my group conversation. This process may have been different though, had the conversations in the room been about getting rich or about some secret life trick that everyone wanted. The motivation level would have been higher to listen to others and the arousal and interest would have spiked. My eavesdropping would be in full effect.
Your post was relative to every day life so I found it even more interesting. Thanks!
Allison
Great post. Aside from the cocktail party effect, I believe that being able to single out a specific sound or conversation is based on interest. Goldstein referenced to William James’s (1890) definition of attention in the textbook. “Millions of items… are present to my senses which never properly enter my experience. Why? Because they have no interest for me..” (Goldstein, p. 87).
Hi nmb131!
I love the idea of the cocktail party effect. I think all of us can name a dozen situations in which we were able to tune out all other noise to focus on a conversation, song, directions, and so on.
My boyfriend hates it when he’s trying to whisper about me to some of our friends (jokingly, of course) and I always shout from wherever I am, “I can hear you!” He says that I have bat ears (which is funny, since you talked about the bat studies). In reality, I can’t hear everything he is saying, but he usually says my name at one point and as we learned from the Goldstein readings, picking our names out of a plethora of noises is one of the prime examples of the cocktail party effect.
I enjoyed reading your post, and learning about the bat study!
Kelle