Languages guide dynamic attending in different ways: The case of the cocktail party effect

Real-life listening situations often require the listener to process speech in the presence of other, concurrent speech streams. The so-called cocktail party problem is frequently analyzed as a two-step process, consisting of stream segregation (perceptual stage) and selective attention (attentional stage). The Dynamic Attending Theory integrates perception and attention by proposing that attentional oscillations track events, enhancing perception at predicted time points. Neural oscillations have been shown to track the attended speech in a cocktail party situation. In this review article, we take a cross-linguistic approach to explore dynamic attending at the cocktail party, its linguistic differences, and the functional brain networks associated with it.