Auditory Closure Problems

Auditory Closure, or the Cocktail Party Effect – An Auditory Perceptual Task
C. R. Hillenbrand, M.D. 2010 0907

Auditory Closure
The “cocktail party effect” is the ability to discern your name being called in a crowded noisy room. You may not be able to understand any conversational threads as their individual volumes rise and fall, but you can nearly always hear your own name when it is called over this background noise.

Another name for this ability is auditory closure. This perceptual task requires intact brain perceptual functioning. It is classified as a figure-ground discrimination task. The relevant “figure” for auditory perception at the cocktail party is your name. The “ground” is the background noise of the party. Perhaps easier to understand at first is visual closure. In the monthly magazine called Highlights for Children there is often a hidden picture puzzle. A drawing, e.g., a public park, is shown. Hidden within the trees and bushes and devices in the park are other pictures, such as a tricycle, a ball, and the like. Being able to spot these items despite the background of the park is called visual closure, and represents solution of the visual figure-ground discrimination task. In a similar manner, being able to hear your name is a solution of the auditory figure-ground task.

Science
The ability to selectively attend to your name is present by age 5 months, though it is enhanced considerably by age 1 year.¹¹ Selective listening is apparently mediated by a distinct collection of neurons.¹ Paying attention to a person’s face as he speaks enhances this ability, especially in noisy environments.⁹ Stretching the facial skin and muscle contractions in our vocal apparatus provides enhancement of perceived speech.⁷ This may be a specialization of the left hemisphere auditory cortex,^1,4 particularly the anterior structures.² This has been further delineated with PET scans.¹³ Listening with both ears confers as much as a 6-7 decibel advantage in the presence of multiple distractors.⁶ This effect can be blocked by blocking one ear in early childhood. It is particularly interfered with by blocking one ear in adult life.⁸ Hearing-impaired persons have even greater difficulty with auditory closure.³ This closure problem may be related to noise-induced hearing trauma.¹⁴ However, hearing loss may worsen auditory closure less than having a small vocabulary.¹² A test to measure auditory closure problems has been proposed,⁵ and a method of treatment published.¹⁰

Auditory Closure Problems
Auditory closure tasks are common:

• Perceive a conversational comment in a busy cafeteria
• Understanding a comment made by your friend while you are watching a movie together
• Being able to perceive your parent’s or your partner’s request or comment while watching television
• Being able to hear assignments in a noisy classroom

Should you have a problem with these tasks, you may have an auditory closure problem. When such perceptual difficulty exists, the solutions to each problem can be detrimental to the self-esteem of the person. For example:

• Nodding your head as if understanding the comment – when you were asked to answer a specific question.
• In a movie theater, your friend says something to you – you miss both the comment and the voices from the screen, and say “Uh-huh.”
• Your mother says “Go to your room, make your bed, and then come down to the kitchen.” All you hear is “Go to your room”, so you go to your room and sit there until your mother comes to your room and asks, “What, you haven’t made your bed yet? What’s wrong with you?”
• The teacher says, “Take out your History book, turn to page 37, and answer questions 8 through 15.” You only hear “Take out your History book” because of the rustle of clothing, and because of books landing on desks and pages being turned, and because of the constant murmurs of student voices now present in classrooms. You see other students turning to page 37, so you turn to page 37. You find questions, and you begin answering questions 1 through 20.

Effects in Life
This perceptual difficulty causes problems from early in life. Unless the room is quiet, many misunderstandings accrue. Parents worry their child is a little dull, or has a behavior problem. These concerns are increased when the child goes to school. Assignments are not done, assignments are done incorrectly, homework is not turned in or is “lost” when the child realizes he did the wrong work, your child does not recite in class, your child does not participate in class discussions…these are the kinds of situations that occur. The teacher may think the child is mentally dull, or has attention-deficit disorder, or has a behavior problem. Parent-teacher conferences do not help: due to ignorance of the nature of the difficulty, the parents blame the teacher, the teacher blames the parents, and both blame the child. Since the child has always had this difficulty, it is “normal” for him or her.

Perceiving conversations on the playground, in gym class, in the noisy classroom, in the cafeteria, at games – this simply does not occur. As a consequence, social rules are not learned except by violating them. The child may be excluded from after school activities: by not realizing the activities are offered, by missing the time to volunteer, by mishearing how to sign up…

Interpersonally, so long as conversations occur in relative quiet there is no problem. When radios or I-machines or computers play music (or in particular, play conversation), communication does not occur because of the perceptual block.

Hearing your employer at work, hearing your sergeant in military service, hearing anything in noisy environs is a major problem.

What to Do
Speech therapists are the specialists who can work with persons who have auditory closure problems. The treatment consists of learning to recognize auditory signals, memorizing those signals, then learning to produce those signals in a background of auditory distraction. This will take 6 to 12 months.

In addition, relevant persons in the environment should be informed about the presence of this perceptual difficulty in the person in question. School teachers should learn about it. Principals or the relevant administrator in high school should be apprised of this difficulty. In college, the Dean of Students office typically has a department devoted to students who have any of a variety of learning differences. The student should be provided with written lists of assignments, outlines of class discussions, and recordings of classes. Tests requiring verbal interpretation should be given to this particular student in a quiet area.

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