Estimating sound source distance with and without vision.
BACKGROUND
Visual capture is an important perceptual phenomenon in which the spatial location of a visual target influences the perceived location of a related auditory target. Little is known about visual capture in a distance dimension.


METHODS
Two groups of listeners judged the apparent distances of five loudspeaker sound sources, extending from 1 to 5 m. In one group, each listener was allowed to view the loudspeaker array. In the second group, listeners were blindfolded for the duration of the experiment.


RESULTS
No visual capture effects were observed. Instead, the addition of vision was found to both improve distance judgment accuracy and lower judgment variability compared with the auditory-only stimulus. Auditory-only accuracy was found to substantially improve over the course of the experiment, however.


CONCLUSIONS
Visual capture in distance is perhaps less general than suggested by past research, a result that has important implications for the display of spatial layout under conditions where vision is either missing or degraded.
Zahorik
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Department of Psychology, University of California, Santa Barbara, 93106-9660, USA. zahorik@psych.ucsb.edu
D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D013017:Sound Localization / Q000502:physiology*; D013028:Space Perception / Q000502:physiology*; D014785:Vision, Ocular / Q000502:physiology*; D014796:Visual Perception / Q000502:physiology