Re: Number of concurrent streams.

[DeLiang Wang <dwang@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

This is precisely the question treated extensively in Cowan's target
article in BBS, which reviews evidence from multiple modalities including
audition and addresses questions such as the relationship between
attention and short-term memory. The title implies an answer already:

Cowan, N. (2001), "The magic number 4 in short-term memory: a
reconsideration
of mental storage capacity," Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 24, 87-185.

Another point is that the capacity (the maximum number) probably varies with
the material. One would think that the capacity is smaller in listening to
multiple speech utterances than multiple pure tones or synthetic vowels.

Cheers,

DeLiang

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