Cocktail party effect - Research Paper Example

People with these disorders have problems with the ability to focus on a certain aspect of the environment” (The cocktail party, . The topic that I have picked which is of key relevance is that of the impact that disorders have on an individual’s ability to focus on the environment, more specifically the hearing aspects. Instead of selecting one of the disorders I selected deficits which tend to occur as individuals get older. Why this aspect is relevant is because the impairment of hearing is directly related to an individual’s ability to learn and hence it makes it difficult for older adults to grasp concepts, face increased confusion and a certain lapse in memory due to an individual’s hearing difficulties brought on by old age.

The research that can be directly related to this concept is that which pertains to the study conducted by Schneider et al on Speech Comprehension Difficulties in Older Adults. The study looks at whether the difficulty in comprehension in aged individuals is a result of either cognitive slowing or that of age related changes in hearing?The study made us of three experiments, in which independent groups were used with a sample of 12 younger and 12 older adults. The first language of these individuals was English.

While the older adults had volunteered from the local community, the younger participants had been recruits from the University of Toronto. Also in order to validate the sample it was compulsory that none of the participants had ever had any history of hearing disorders or need for the use of hearing aids.The working hypothesis of the study was the notion that older individuals would have more difficulty in handling speed induced acoustic distortions when compared to the younger adults. After carrying out the 3 experiments in which a number of listening conditions were introduced in order to analyze the cognitive abilities of the young and the older adults.

The results of the study show that the speech comprehension in adults decreases at a rate which is more rapid in older individuals when compared to younger adults. This was noticed as the speech rate was increased in the experiments. So the interaction of the variables of age and speed reflected the inability of the older individual’s auditory system to deal with the speed induced stimulus degradation. However when the speeded speech was tuned in a way that created a minimal degradation, both of the groups performed equally.

Also it was noticed that by increasing speech by the use of other methods, word identification seemed to grow lesser for the older individuals than the younger ones. This goes to prove the notion as put forward by the highlighted statement, which refers to the difficulty in recognizing aspects by individuals in an older age making learning more difficult being due to hearing complications. The results similarly show that auditory decline and not cognitive slowing was responsible for the poor performance given by the older adults in the intense speeded conditions.

ReferencesSchneider, Daneman and Murphy. (2005). Speech Comprehension Difficulties in Older Adults: Cognitive Slowing or Age-Related Changes in Hearing? Psychology and Aging, American Psychological Association, 2005, Vol. 20, No. 2, 261–271.http://www.apa.org/pubs/journals/features/pag-202261.pdfABC news. 2012. The cocktail party. Web. Retrieved on 28th April 2012 from: http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/health/2012/04/18/the-cocktail-party-effect-how-we-tune-in-to-one-person-at-a-loud-party/