It is the phenomenon of being able to focus one’s auditory attention on a particular stimulus while filtering out range of other stimulus.
It works best as a bin-aural effect which requires hearing with both ears. This is related to the localization of sound sources.
FACTORS CONTRIBUTING TO COCKTAIL EFFECT ARE:
Use of bin-aural hearing contributes to a biological form noise cancellation in which the sound arriving at two ears are compared and the noise selectively suppressed, unmasking the speech signals.
Bin-aural hearing is affected by toe inter-aural time difference: ear differentiate between low frequencies and this is done by MSO.
Bin-aural hearing is also affected by inter-aural level difference: ear differentiate between high frequencies and this is done by LSO.
Protection