The cocktail party effect is another example of selective attention. Now
imagine you're in a room having a conversation with your friends about how much
you love your Introduction to Psychology at Udasity class. And how everybody
should take it. Then all of a sudden you heard your name from across the room.
In this example you're selectively attending to the conversation you were
having. Yet still heard your name across a noisy room with a bunch of other
conversations going on. So you were able to filter out the background auditory
stimuli that wasn't important, that was the background conversations. Yet you
were still able to focus on the important stimulus which was your name. So that
background information came to the foreground.
