Cocktail party effect

A phenomenon which concerns people’s distribution of attention. At a cocktail party or other such social occasions, people switch their attention amongst different simultaneous conversations. A listener selects one person’s discourse while ignoring others which might be just as loud. In addition to the characteristics of the listener, other factors such as the distance of the speakers, which way a speaker is facing, etc., affect the ability of a listener not to be distracted by other conversations. A noteworthy finding is that words or phrases with emotional content have a great effect upon attention-switching. In the setting of multiple concurrent discussions should, for example, the listener’s name be spoken or a topic introduced which holds a particular interest or significance for the listener, or words such as “cunnilingus”, “fellatio”, etc., be dropped, any of these events will be likely to initiate a switch of attention.

Information attended to is likely to be remembered, while information which is not accorded that mental focus will not be learned (and therefore not remembered).

(see also: Selective Attention, perception, memory)