The "cocktail party effect" refers to the fact that shadowing performance is disrupted when ______ is embedded in the unattended message.

A) backward speech
B) the listener's name
C) a section of repeated words
D) music

Cocktail Party Effect

The ability of the human brain to focus one's auditory attention on a particular stimulus while filtering out a range of other stimuli, much like being able to concentrate on a single conversation in a noisy environment.

Unattended Message

Information that is not directly focused on or noticed by an individual, especially in studies of selective attention.