Cocktail party effect

The ability to attend to one conversation or sound source in a noisy environment while filtering out competing sounds. It also describes the perceptual capture of attention by salient sounds, such as hearing one’s name.

Auditory attention: The selective allocation of processing to sounds or sound features. The effect is a specific case of attention selecting one auditory stream over others.
Auditory masking: The reduction in audibility of one sound caused by another sound. Masking explains when competing noise physically obscures a target voice.
Colin Cherry: A British cognitive scientist who pioneered experimental studies of selective listening. Cherry gave the effect its early experimental foundation.
Early selection theory: The view that attention filters information before its meaning is fully processed. It contrasts with evidence that some unattended speech can still be recognized.
Auditory scene analysis: The perceptual organization of sound into streams attributed to distinct sources. Grouping cues help listeners distinguish a voice from competing sounds.
Binaural hearing: Hearing with both ears and using information from each to perceive sound. Differences between the ears help separate voices by location.
Donald Broadbent: A British psychologist known for an influential early model of selective attention. His filter model was shaped by findings from competing-speech experiments.
Late selection theory: The view that competing inputs receive substantial processing before selection determines awareness or response. It offers an alternative to filtering sounds solely by early acoustic features.
Selective attention: The prioritization of some information for processing while other information is ignored. Attending to one conversation requires prioritizing it over other voices.
Interaural time difference: The difference in arrival time of a sound at the two ears. It provides a spatial cue for locating a voice among competitors.

Linked from 2 pages