The main challenge faced by many researchers is the neurobiology of language. Auditory perception, context effects in sounds processing have emerged as frequently studied by the academia.

To date, several studies have investigated how listeners can selectively attend to one talker even in the presence of multiple competing sounds in everyday environments (Goddard, 2012; Dick et al., 2016; Miller, 2016). These cross-sectional studies suggest an association between behavioral studies of the brain networks and one's attention focus on a particular stimulus while filtering out a range of other stimuli. This effect is widely-known as cocktail party effect (American Academy of Audiology, 2021)

In his auditory perception study Goddard (2012) notes that auditory information has to be received and analysed sequentially. He concludes that attention is an important concept to consider in relation to auditory perception ann defines it as the concentration of mental effort on sensory or mental events. While Goddard (2012) focuses on two main methods of studying attention: shadowing or dichotic listening experiments and dual task techniques, Dick et al. (2016) are more concerned with context effects in environmental sounds processing. Researchers suggest that linguistic context affects performance in phoneme monitoring, lexical decision, and naming tasks.

Several studies have used longitudinal data to examine the cocktail party effect in medical cases. For instance, the causes and treatments for deterioration in your brain’s ability to decode words in loud situations, also known as hidden hearing loss were investigated worldwide. A number of authors have considered the effects of misucians ability to better decode the speech in crowd.

This concept has recently been challenged by studies demonstrating the cocktail party effect problem in educational contexts. Data from several studies suggest that this issue can be addressed during seminars abd workshops, reciatations and in teaching EFL. Dick et al (2016) argue that “environmental sound identification also occurs in the presence of similar competing sounds and backgrounds. In everyday listening situations, listeners do not identify environmental sound targets in isolation, but from within a background of multiple competing sound sources”. For educational contexts this means that a lecturer is normally aware of the content and has everyday listening experience with a specific class.

There has been little quantitative analysis of assessing multiple speakers performance in EFL classes. EFL teahers tend to listen to multiple pairs and groups and very little is currently known about how EFL teachers perceive their learners performance in L2. Moreover, what is not yet clear is the impact of interpenetration of L1 and L2 on EFL teachers’ auditory perception while monitoring learners’ performance. Namely, how L1-L2 interpenetration influences teachers’ response to both or all messages and how attention is divided between the incoming information sources. Applying Goddard’s (2012) experimental techniques to the educational context can shed some light on the subject.

Ultimately, understanding the neural bases of attention to speech and integrating perceptual, attentional, and educational (EFL) context, might improve our approaches to common challenges in EFL such as assessing multiple speakers during group work activites.

References

1. American Academy of Audiology. (n.d.). The Cocktail Party Effect. Retrieved August 31, 2021, from https://www.audiology.org/the-cocktail-party-effect/
2. Dick, F., Krishnan, S., Leech, R., Saygin, A. P. (2016). Chapter 89 - Environmental Sounds. In Gregory Hickok, Steven L. Small (Ed.), Neurobiology of Language (pp. 1121-1138). Retrieved from https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-12- 407794-2.00089-4.
3. Goddard, N. (2012). Chapter 5 - Psychology. In Padraig Wright, Julian Stem, Michael Phelan (Ed.), Core Psychiatry (3rd ed., pp. 63-82). Retrieved from https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-7020-3397-1.00005-7.
4. Miller, L. M. (2016). Chapter 41 - Neural Mechanisms of Attention to Speech. In Gregory Hickok, Steven L. Small (Ed.), Neurobiology of Language (pp. 503-514). Retrieved from https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-12-407794-2.00041-9.