Attention can isolate one voice among many, yet unattended channels still register one's own name.
Cherry's 1953 dichotic listening work established selective listening and the cocktail party problem. The specific finding that one's own name can break through an unattended channel was demonstrated by Moray in 1959 and later replicated, which suggests filtering happens after some processing rather than before.
In practice
- You lose the thread of a conference talk and then hear your own name from the row behind.
- An open-plan office worker filters out four conversations and looks up instantly when someone says the name of their project.
- Further reading
- Wikipedia
- Subject
- Psychology & Behavior
- Essay
- A century and a half of measuring the mind