Executive summary

During the research that I have done over the cocktail party effect I have found many interesting studies. I learned that the definition cocktail party effect is the brains ability to focus on certain information given while ignoring others even if they are being spoken at the same level of tone and in same area. In the section of the earlier research I reviewed, I found that the cocktail party effect has been researched since the 1950s. The research, over what became known as the “cocktail party effect”, first came about when dealing with air traffic controllers. In earlier times air traffic controllers had a hard job figuring out where certain plans were coming from. They heard the voices of the pilots coming from all directions over a loudspeaker. This was difficult because it became a challenging task knowing where the pilot’s airplane was and how close or how far they were from the airport or to other planes. After studying this ordeal researchers figured out how to use technology and machines to make it where air traffic controllers could hear the pilots through headphones and then be able to differentiate where certain airplanes were in contrast to other pilots and also what direction they were going and how close they were to the airport. In another section of my studies how discovered that humans are not the only living species that use the cocktail party effect in their everyday lives. A certain fish known as the midshipman fish uses this technique in their mating process. The midshipman fish male hums at a rate of 100Hz in frequency (just barely breaking the human hearing threshold). Then the midshipman fish female uses what is know as the hindbrain, that responds to 100Hz in frequency, to locate the male and lay her eggs with the fish of her choosing. And although this may not sound like much, in a noisy environment such as the ocean this becomes quite the amazing stunt of the hearing ability.