Article
Adaptation to source spectrum improves auditory localisation along sagittal planes (en)
* Presenting author
Abstract:
The acoustic filtering of the sound field by the listener causes directional spectral-shape cues that help the listener to localise sound sources along sagittal planes, i.e., elevation perception and front-back discrimination. However, the sound source also produces spectral cues that are direction-independent and can interfere with the directional spectral cues. While the auditory system may have difficulty dissociating these two types of spectral cues, it is commonly assumed that listeners cannot get rid of this interference through adaptation. We tested this assumption by letting listeners localize ripple-spectrum sounds in the acoustic free field. The ripple shape was either fixed or randomized within blocks. Our results show that listeners performed better under fixed than randomized conditions by the end of blocks. This outcome refutes the common assumption and suggests that listeners do adapt to the source spectrum and make use of this non-spatial prior information to improve their localization performance along sagittal planes.