Department of Psychology, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, Utah, USA.
Interdisciplinary Program in Neuroscience, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, Utah, USA.
J Vis. 2024 Oct 3;24(11):7. doi: 10.1167/jov.24.11.7.
Auditory landmarks can contribute to spatial updating during navigation with vision. Whereas large inter-individual differences have been identified in how navigators combine auditory and visual landmarks, it is still unclear under what circumstances audition is used. Further, whether or not individuals optimally combine auditory cues with visual cues to decrease the amount of perceptual uncertainty, or variability, has not been well-documented. Here, we test audiovisual integration during spatial updating in a virtual navigation task. In Experiment 1, 24 individuals with normal sensory acuity completed a triangular homing task with either visual landmarks, auditory landmarks, or both. In addition, participants experienced a fourth condition with a covert spatial conflict where auditory landmarks were rotated relative to visual landmarks. Participants generally relied more on visual landmarks than auditory landmarks and were no more accurate with multisensory cues than with vision alone. In Experiment 2, a new group of 24 individuals completed the same task, but with simulated low vision in the form of a blur filter to increase visual uncertainty. Again, participants relied more on visual landmarks than auditory ones and no multisensory benefit occurred. Participants navigating with blur did not rely more on their hearing compared with the group that navigated with normal vision. These results support previous research showing that one sensory modality at a time may be sufficient for spatial updating, even under impaired viewing conditions. Future research could investigate task- and participant-specific factors that lead to different strategies of multisensory cue combination with auditory and visual cues.
听觉地标可以帮助视觉导航时进行空间更新。尽管导航者在如何组合听觉和视觉地标方面存在很大的个体差异，但在什么情况下使用听觉仍然不清楚。此外，个体是否通过最佳地组合听觉线索和视觉线索来减少感知不确定性或可变性，尚未得到很好的记录。在这里，我们在虚拟导航任务中测试空间更新期间的视听整合。在实验 1 中，24 名具有正常感官敏锐度的个体使用视觉地标、听觉地标或两者完成了一个三角归航任务。此外，参与者还经历了第四个条件，即听觉地标相对于视觉地标发生了隐蔽的空间冲突。参与者通常更依赖视觉地标，而不是听觉地标，并且使用多感官线索并不比单独使用视觉更准确。在实验 2 中，一组新的 24 名个体完成了相同的任务，但以模糊滤镜的形式模拟低视力以增加视觉不确定性。同样，参与者更依赖视觉地标而不是听觉地标，也没有出现多感官的好处。与使用正常视力导航的组相比，使用模糊导航的参与者不会更多地依赖他们的听力。这些结果支持了先前的研究，表明即使在观看条件受损的情况下，一次一个感官模态也可能足以进行空间更新。未来的研究可以调查导致听觉和视觉线索的多感官线索组合策略不同的任务和参与者特定因素。
