Subject: Re: Number of concurrent streams. From: DeLiang Wang <dwang(at)CIS.OHIO-STATE.EDU> Date: Tue, 4 May 2004 11:54:29 -0400This 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 -- ------------------------------------------------------------ Prof. DeLiang Wang Department of Computer Science and Engineering The Ohio State University 2015 Neil Ave. Columbus, OH 43210-1277, U.S.A. Email: dwang [at] cis [dot] ohio-state [dot] edu Phone: 614-292-6827 (OFFICE); 614-292-7402 (LAB) Fax: 614-292-2911 URL: http://www.cse.ohio-state.edu/~dwang