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Study on Hierarchical Attentional Control Mechanisms of Language Comprehension in Noisy Environments—Exploration of Psycholinguistic Perspectives and Teaching Applications Based on the Cocktail Party Effect

Guide to Education Innovation / 2025,5(3): 34−42 / 2025-07-23 43 14

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• Authors: Xuanru Kong
• Information:

  Heilongjiang University, Harbin

• Keywords:
  Cocktail Party Effect; Attentional control; Language comprehension; Noisy environments; Psycholinguistics; Cognitive plasticity; Working memory; Bilingual processing
• Abstract: In the study of language comprehension in noisy environments, the Cocktail Party Effect, as a classic cognitive phenomenon, has vividly revealed the selective attentional capacity of the human auditory system. The effect describes the remarkable phenomenon of an individual’s ability to focus on a specific conversation even in the midst of a noisy party, and is essentially a mechanism of selective attention of the attentional control system to key cues of language. Early acoustic processing enhances the efficiency of speech parsing through perceptual preferences developed through everyday language interactions (e.g., voice onset time that reinforces bursts). This cognitive mechanism has a dual significance in noisy language comprehension: on the one hand, it reflects the filtering function underlying attentional control over acoustic interference; on the other hand, its efficiency differences directly reflect the plasticity characterizing the individual’s language processing ability. Based on the theoretical framework of psycholinguistics, this study systematically elucidates the mechanism of hierarchical attentional control for language comprehension in noisy environments, using the cocktail party effect as the entry point. Early acoustic processing enhances speech parsing efficiency through experience-driven perceptual weight adjustments (e.g., voice onset time for reinforcement of bursts); mid-phrase lexical competition resists semantic interference through inhibitory control; and late syntactic processing relies on strategic allocation of working memory resources. Behavioral plasticity is characterized by a significant increase in noise comprehension accuracy due to bilinguals’ inhibitory control, and children with specific language impairment (SLI) showed significant between-group differences in sentence repetition ability under classroom noise through 8 weeks of rhyming attention training, a finding that provides an empirical basis for language teaching.
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.35534/gei.0503005
• Cite: Kong, X. R. (2025). Language Comprehension in Noisy Environments—Exploration of Psycholinguistic Perspectives and Teaching Applications Based on the Cocktail Party Effect. Guide to Education Innovation, 5(3), 34−42.