Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, Bethesda, MD, USA.
Henry M. Jackson Foundation, USA.
Hum Factors. 2019 Sep;61(6):976-991. doi: 10.1177/0018720819831092. Epub 2019 Mar 14.
The present study was designed to examine the impact that walking has on performance in auditory localization, visual discrimination, and aurally aided visual search tasks.
Auditory localization and visual search are critical skills that are frequently conducted by moving observers, but most laboratory studies of these tasks have been conducted on stationary listeners who were either seated or standing during stimulus presentation.
Thirty participants completed three different tasks while either standing still or while walking at a comfortable self-selected pace on a treadmill: (1) an auditory localization task, where they identified the perceived location of a target sound; (2) a visual discrimination task, where they identified a visual target presented at a known location directly in front of the listener; and (3) an aurally aided visual search task, where they identified a visual target that was presented in the presence of multiple visual distracters either in isolation or in conjunction with a spatially colocated auditory cue.
Participants who were walking performed auditory localization and aurally aided visual search tasks significantly faster than those who were standing, with no loss in accuracy.
The improved aurally aided visual search performance found in this experiment may be related to enhanced overall activation caused by walking. It is also possible that the slight head movements required may have provided auditory cues that enhanced localization accuracy.
The results have potential applications in virtual and augmented reality displays where audio cues might be presented to listeners while walking.
本研究旨在考察步行对听觉定位、视觉辨别和听觉辅助视觉搜索任务表现的影响。
听觉定位和视觉搜索是移动观察者经常进行的关键技能，但这些任务的大多数实验室研究都是在刺激呈现期间坐在或站着的固定听众中进行的。
30 名参与者在跑步机上以舒适的自选择速度站立或行走时完成了三项不同的任务：（1）听觉定位任务，他们识别目标声音的感知位置；（2）视觉辨别任务，他们识别出在听众正前方已知位置呈现的视觉目标；（3）听觉辅助视觉搜索任务，他们在存在多个视觉干扰物的情况下识别视觉目标，这些干扰物要么单独呈现，要么与空间上同位的听觉提示一起呈现。
与站立的参与者相比，行走的参与者在听觉定位和听觉辅助视觉搜索任务中的表现明显更快，且准确性没有下降。
本实验中发现的听觉辅助视觉搜索性能的提高可能与行走引起的整体激活增强有关。也有可能是因为行走时需要轻微的头部运动，从而提供了增强定位准确性的听觉提示。
这些结果在虚拟现实和增强现实显示器中具有潜在的应用，在这些显示器中，音频提示可能会在听众行走时呈现。
