Cocktail party effect
This is the way in which someone is able to separate sounds and focus his or her attention to one relevant as well as particular talker from a mixture of conversations and background noises.
When someone is at a cocktail party for example, there is usually some background music playing while the different guests are having their conversations. These conversations are loud enough to be heard by people who are close by, but people filter all this and then concentrate on only what they are talking about with the people they are talking to. This is the work of the left side of the brain, and it is known as the cocktail party effect.
For people without any hearing problem, this is easily done, and they have no difficulties discriminating against these sounds, whether at a party, in a noisy street or anywhere else.
But this is usually a huge problem for those people who have hearing impairment. These hearing impaired people have a problem because when they are talking to someone, that person’s worlds are usually lost or even drowned by the discussions or conversations of other people, the music playing or other sounds that are present in their surrounding.
This is not an easy thing to deal with. However, there is continued research to try and address the reason why these people cannot discriminate these sounds and also try to get a solution for them, so that they can reduce this sometimes frustrating effect that they have.
Allistir Willam is author of this article on cocktail party effect. Find more information about hearing impaired.