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cocktail-party effect love

cocktail-party effect

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  • MaryW commented on the word cocktail-party effect

    The ability to focus on one particular voice or song against a hubbub of background noise is known as the cocktail-party effect. This is a common problem for birds that live in a noisy world. Just think of the dawn chorus. In pristine habitats there may be as many as thirty different songbird species—with several individuals of each—singing at once, and the effect can be almost deafening. Each bird has to dinstinguish not only its own species, but also different individuals.
    Tim Birkhead, Bird Sense: What It's Like to Be a Bird (New York: Walker & Co., 2012), p. 57

    May 30, 2016