Auditory distance perception by blind and sighted participants for both within- and beyond-reach sources.

This study aimed to test the hypothesis that associates blindness with a reduced ability to judge the absolute distance from sound sources. Our working hypotheses were the following: (a) Within reach, a blind subject will be able to make up for the lack of vision using proprioceptive information to calibrate the acoustic distance perception cues. (b) As the source becomes unreachable, blind people will show greater biases since, out of reach, the proposed mechanism for calibration could not be used.

Reaching measures and feedback effects in auditory peripersonal space.

We analyse the effects of exploration feedback on reaching measures of perceived auditory peripersonal space (APS) boundary and the auditory distance perception (ADP) of sound sources located within it. We conducted an experiment in which the participants had to estimate if a sound source was (or not) reachable and to estimate its distance (40 to 150 cm in 5-cm steps) by reaching to a small loudspeaker. The stimulus consisted of a train of three bursts of Gaussian broadband noise.

Relationship Between Auditory Context and Visual Distance Perception: Effect of Musical Expertise in the Ability to Translate Reverberation Cues Into Room-Size Perception.

In a recently published work by our group [ Scientific Reports, 7, 7189 (2017)], we performed experiments of visual distance perception in two dark rooms with extremely different reverberation times: one anechoic ( T ∼ 0.12 s) and the other reverberant ( T ∼ 4 s). The perceived distance of the targets was systematically greater in the reverberant room when contrasted to the anechoic chamber.

Direct-location versus verbal report methods for measuring auditory distance perception in the far field.

In this study we evaluated whether a method of direct location is an appropriate response method for measuring auditory distance perception of far-field sound sources. We designed an experimental set-up that allows participants to indicate the distance at which they perceive the sound source by moving a visual marker. We termed this method Cross-Modal Direct Location (CMDL) since the response procedure involves the visual modality while the stimulus is presented through the auditory modality.

Auditory environmental context affects visual distance perception.

In this article, we show that visual distance perception (VDP) is influenced by the auditory environmental context through reverberation-related cues. We performed two VDP experiments in two dark rooms with extremely different reverberation times: an anechoic chamber and a reverberant room. Subjects assigned to the reverberant room perceived the targets farther than subjects assigned to the anechoic chamber.

Sound Spectrum Influences Auditory Distance Perception of Sound Sources Located in a Room Environment.

Previous studies on the effect of spectral content on auditory distance perception (ADP) focused on the physically measurable cues occurring either in the near field (low-pass filtering due to head diffraction) or when the sound travels distances >15 m (high-frequency energy losses due to air absorption). Here, we study how the spectrum of a sound arriving from a source located in a reverberant room at intermediate distances (1-6 m) influences the perception of the distance to the source. First, we conducted an ADP experiment using pure tones (the simplest possible spectrum) of frequencies 0.

An Auditory Illusion of Proximity of the Source Induced by Sonic Crystals.

In this work we report an illusion of proximity of a sound source created by a sonic crystal placed between the source and a listener. This effect seems, at first, paradoxical to naïve listeners since the sonic crystal is an obstacle formed by almost densely packed cylindrical scatterers. Even when the singular acoustical properties of these periodic composite materials have been studied extensively (including band gaps, deaf bands, negative refraction, and birrefringence), the possible perceptual effects remain unexplored.

Principal pitch of frequency-modulated tones with asymmetrical modulation waveform: a comparison of models.

In this work, the overall perceived pitch (principal pitch) of pure tones modulated in frequency with an asymmetric waveform is studied. The dependence of the principal pitch on the degree of asymmetric modulation was obtained from a psychophysical experiment. The modulation waveform consisted of a flat portion of constant frequency and two linear segments forming a peak.

Response time distributions in rapid chess: a large-scale decision making experiment.

Rapid chess provides an unparalleled laboratory to understand decision making in a natural environment. In a chess game, players choose consecutively around 40 moves in a finite time budget. The goodness of each choice can be determined quantitatively since current chess algorithms estimate precisely the value of a position.