Department of Psychology, University of Utah, 380 S. 1530 E., Room 502, UT 84112, Salt Lake City, UT, USA.
Interdepartmental Program in Neuroscience, University of Utah, UT 84112, Salt Lake City, USA.
Atten Percept Psychophys. 2024 Jul;86(5):1473-1479. doi: 10.3758/s13414-024-02890-x. Epub 2024 May 9.
Auditory cues are integrated with vision and body-based self-motion cues for motion perception, balance, and gait, though limited research has evaluated their effectiveness for navigation. Here, we tested whether an auditory cue co-localized with a visual target could improve spatial updating in a virtual reality homing task. Participants navigated a triangular homing task with and without an easily localizable spatial audio signal co-located with the home location. The main outcome was unsigned angular error, defined as the absolute value of the difference between the participant's turning response and the correct response towards the home location. Angular error was significantly reduced in the presence of spatial sound compared to a head-fixed identical auditory signal. Participants' angular error was 22.79° in the presence of spatial audio and 30.09° in its absence. Those with the worst performance in the absence of spatial sound demonstrated the greatest improvement with the added sound cue. These results suggest that auditory cues may benefit navigation, particularly for those who demonstrated the highest level of spatial updating error in the absence of spatial sound.
听觉线索与视觉和基于身体的自身运动线索相结合，用于运动感知、平衡和步态，尽管有限的研究评估了它们在导航中的有效性。在这里，我们测试了一个与视觉目标共定位的听觉线索是否可以改善虚拟现实归航任务中的空间更新。参与者在有和没有与目标位置共定位的易于定位的空间音频信号的情况下进行三角形归航任务。主要结果是无符号角度误差，定义为参与者的转向响应与朝向目标位置的正确响应之间的差值的绝对值。与头部固定的相同听觉信号相比，存在空间声音时角度误差明显降低。存在空间音频时，参与者的角度误差为 22.79°，不存在空间音频时为 30.09°。在没有空间声音的情况下表现最差的那些人在添加声音线索后表现出最大的改善。这些结果表明，听觉线索可能对导航有益，特别是对于那些在没有空间声音的情况下表现出最高空间更新错误的人。
