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Auditory spatial representations of the world are compressed in blind humans
journal contribution
posted on 2023-09-01, 13:59 authored by Andrew J. Kolarik, Shahina Pardhan, Silvia Cirstea, Brian C. J. MooreCompared to sighted listeners, blind listeners often display enhanced auditory spatial abilities such as localization in azimuth. However, less is known about whether blind humans can accurately judge distance in extrapersonal space using auditory cues alone. Using virtualization techniques, we show that auditory spatial representations of the world beyond the peripersonal space of blind listeners are compressed compared to those for normally sighted controls. Blind participants overestimated the distance to nearby sources, and underestimated the distance to remote sound sources, in both reverberant and anechoic environments, and for speech, music and noise signals. Functions relating judged and actual virtual distance were well fitted by compressive power functions, indicating that the absence of visual information regarding the distance of sound sources may prevent accurate calibration of the distance information provided by auditory signals.
History
Refereed
- Yes
Volume
235Issue number
2Page range
597-606Publication title
Experimental Brain ResearchISSN
1432-1106External DOI
Publisher
SpringerFile version
- Accepted version
Language
- eng
Official URL
Legacy posted date
2016-11-07Legacy creation date
2016-11-05Legacy Faculty/School/Department
ARCHIVED Faculty of Science & Technology (until September 2018)Usage metrics
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