A Review of The Cocktail Party Effect -- "The ``cocktail party effect''--the ability to focus one's listening attention on a single talker among a cacophony of conversations and background noise--has been recognized for some time. This specialized listening ability may be because of characteristics of the human speech production system, the auditory system, or high-level perceptual and language processing. This paper investigates the literature on what is known about the effect, from the original technical descriptions through current research in the areas of auditory streams and spatial display systems." (Comments: Thanks Gabriel White.)