你身處一場熱鬧的派對，音樂聲、說笑聲不絕于耳。你和同伴聊天都得喊著說話。可是，一旦周圍有人提到你的名字，你立馬就能聽到，似乎周圍的喧鬧都被神秘地屏蔽了。這種情況就叫cocktail party effect（雞尾酒會效應）。

　　The cocktail party effect (also known as selective attention) is the phenomenon of being able to focus one's auditory attention on a particular stimulus while filtering out a range of other stimuli, much the same way that a partygoer can focus on a single conversation in a noisy room.

　　雞尾酒會效應（cocktail party effect），也叫選擇性關注（selective attention），指將自己的聽覺注意力放在某一個特定的關注興奮點而將其余的點全部過濾出去的能力，就好像身處熱鬧派對中的人仍然能夠專注于一段對話。

　　This effect is what allows most people to "tune in" to a single voice and "tune out" all others. It may also describe a similar phenomenon that occurs when one can immediately detect words of importance originating from unattended stimuli, for instance hearing one's name in another conversation.

　　這種效應能夠讓多數人將很多其他無關的聲音關掉，只選擇聽自己關注的那一個聲音。還有一個類似的情況是，人們能夠從毫不關注的興奮點中立即識別對自己重要的文字信息。例如，在別人聊天時聽到自己的名字被提及。