Title |
Swinging at a Cocktail Party
|
---|---|
Published in |
Psychological Science, August 2013
|
DOI | 10.1177/0956797613482467 |
Pubmed ID | |
Authors |
Ingrid S. Johnsrude, Allison Mackey, Hélène Hakyemez, Elizabeth Alexander, Heather P. Trang, Robert P. Carlyon |
Abstract |
People often have to listen to someone speak in the presence of competing voices. Much is known about the acoustic cues used to overcome this challenge, but almost nothing is known about the utility of cues derived from experience with particular voices--cues that may be particularly important for older people and others with impaired hearing. Here, we use a version of the coordinate-response-measure procedure to show that people can exploit knowledge of a highly familiar voice (their spouse's) not only to track it better in the presence of an interfering stranger's voice, but also, crucially, to ignore it so as to comprehend a stranger's voice more effectively. Although performance declines with increasing age when the target voice is novel, there is no decline when the target voice belongs to the listener's spouse. This finding indicates that older listeners can exploit their familiarity with a speaker's voice to mitigate the effects of sensory and cognitive decline. |
X Demographics
Geographical breakdown
Country | Count | As % |
---|---|---|
United Kingdom | 3 | 23% |
Canada | 2 | 15% |
United States | 2 | 15% |
Pakistan | 1 | 8% |
Netherlands | 1 | 8% |
New Zealand | 1 | 8% |
Unknown | 3 | 23% |
Demographic breakdown
Type | Count | As % |
---|---|---|
Members of the public | 9 | 69% |
Scientists | 2 | 15% |
Science communicators (journalists, bloggers, editors) | 1 | 8% |
Practitioners (doctors, other healthcare professionals) | 1 | 8% |
Mendeley readers
Geographical breakdown
Country | Count | As % |
---|---|---|
United States | 3 | 1% |
United Kingdom | 2 | <1% |
Canada | 2 | <1% |
Germany | 1 | <1% |
Unknown | 195 | 96% |
Demographic breakdown
Readers by professional status | Count | As % |
---|---|---|
Student > Ph. D. Student | 42 | 21% |
Student > Master | 35 | 17% |
Researcher | 32 | 16% |
Student > Bachelor | 21 | 10% |
Professor | 13 | 6% |
Other | 23 | 11% |
Unknown | 37 | 18% |
Readers by discipline | Count | As % |
---|---|---|
Psychology | 78 | 38% |
Neuroscience | 20 | 10% |
Medicine and Dentistry | 15 | 7% |
Linguistics | 12 | 6% |
Social Sciences | 8 | 4% |
Other | 29 | 14% |
Unknown | 41 | 20% |