THE COCKTAIL PARTY PHENOMENON REVISITED - ATTENTION AND MEMORY IN THECLASSIC SELECTIVE LISTENING PROCEDURE OF CHERRY (1953)

Though E.C. Cherry (1953) examined the recall of information from an i rrelevant spoken channel in selective listening, the relationship betw een attention and subsequent recall still has not been examined adequa tely. It was examined here in 4 experiments, 3 of which were designed to identify conditions under which some participants, but not others, would notice a change from forward to backward speech. Only participan ts who shifted attention toward the irrelevant channel during the back ward speech later recalled hearing it. In those whose attention shifte d, shadowing errors peaked dramatically about 15 s after the change. T here was no evidence of direct or indirect memory for phrases presente d in the irrelevant channel. The results contradict models of attentio n stating that listeners process task-irrelevant information extensive ly without diverting resources used in shadowing.