U-VIP: Unit for Visually Impaired people, Center for Human Technologies, Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia, Genoa, Italy.
DIBRIS Department, University of Genoa, Genoa, Italy.
Sci Rep. 2019 Jul 29;9(1):10992. doi: 10.1038/s41598-019-47410-2.
It is widely accepted that vision plays a key role in the development of spatial skills of the other senses. Recent works have shown that blindness is often associated with auditory spatial deficits. The majority of previous studies have focused on understanding the representation of the upper frontal body space where vision and actions have a central role in mapping the space, however less research has investigated the back space and the space around the legs. Here we investigate space perception around the legs and the role of previous visual experience, by studying sighted and blind participants in an audio localization task (front-back discrimination). Participants judged if a sound was delivered in their frontal or back space. The results showed that blindfolded sighted participants were more accurate than blind participants in the frontal space. However, both groups were similarly accurate when auditory information was delivered in the back space. Blind individuals performed the task with similar accuracy for sounds delivered in the frontal and back space, while sighted people performed better in the frontal space. These results suggest that visual experience influences auditory spatial representations around the legs. Moreover, these results suggest that hearing and vision play different roles in different spaces.
人们普遍认为，视觉在其他感官的空间技能发展中起着关键作用。最近的研究表明，失明通常与听觉空间缺陷有关。大多数先前的研究都集中在理解上半身空间的表示，在这个空间中，视觉和动作在映射空间方面起着核心作用，然而，关于腿部周围的后空间和空间的研究较少。在这里，我们通过在音频定位任务（前后区分）中研究有视力和失明的参与者，来研究腿部周围的空间感知以及先前视觉经验的作用。参与者判断声音是在前部还是后部空间发出的。结果表明，蒙住眼睛的有视力的参与者在前面的空间比失明的参与者更准确。然而，当听觉信息在后空间中传递时，两组人都同样准确。失明者在前面和后面的空间中发出声音时，表现出相似的准确性，而有视力的人在前部空间表现更好。这些结果表明，视觉经验会影响腿部周围的听觉空间表示。此外，这些结果表明，听觉和视觉在不同的空间中发挥着不同的作用。
