Auditory compensation in myopic humans: involvement of binaural, monaural, or echo cues?

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the involvement of various auditory localization mechanisms in the improvement of auditory spatial sensitivity in the case of partial visual deprivation. We compared sensitivity to binaural, monaural, and echo cues between normal-sighted and myopic subjects. In an auditory task, which depended solely upon binaural processing, myopic and normal-sighted subjects showed an almost equal localization performance. We also found that myopic subjects were no more disturbed than normal-sighted subjects when spectral shape cues were removed. On the other hand, near-sighted subjects exhibited better echolocation skills and a higher sensitivity to echo cues than normal-sighted subjects. We can therefore conclude that an improved auditory spatial sensitivity in myopic subjects may result from the increased use of echo information.