Spatial unmasking and attention related to the cocktail party problem

Abstract

Although there are several factors causing “cocktail party effect” after more than half a century of research, the major one is considered to be the spatial separation of the target signal and the interferer. This paper will overview developments of the improvement of performance resulting from the directional separation of the target signal from interferers when listening in a field or through headphones. The basic assumption concerning the cocktail party effect is that there are one or more interfering sound sources in addition to the target signal source. In this situation it is important to remember the selective attention effect, which attenuates the interfering sound by concentrating the attention on a specific signal. Pitch of sound is the simplest cue for selective attention; however, spatial information can also be one. The latter half of this review discusses the effect of spatial filtering and an attention filter on the frequency domain.