STUDIES OF HUMAN SPATIAL HEARING

在三维世界中定位和跟踪声音的能力对于正常的通信和导航至关重要。当这种能力下降时，就像许多类型的听力损失一样，沟通就会严重中断。该项目的长期目标是全面了解人类空间听觉的机制和过程。在以前的供资期间进行的研究侧重于与无回声环境中单一固定声源的本地化有关的问题。从这项研究中，我们学到了许多关于声音方向线索的性质以及人类听众如何使用这些线索的知识。本申请中提出的研究既扩展和阐述了早期的本地化研究，又进入了声源运动感知和声源距离感知等新领域。建议的方法包括虚拟听觉空间(VAS)技术，该技术最初是在以前的资助期间在实验室开发的，以及一个变种的“单刺激条件化”(COSS)程序，它可以给出单个听者对各种空间线索的感知权重的定量估计。新的运动和距离研究将提供在几种不同刺激条件下各种运动和距离线索的区别和相对权重的基本数据。拟议的定位实验将解决关于光谱线索和耳间延迟线索的处理的未回答的问题，特别是关于在不同的定位环境中分配给这些线索的相对权重。

The ability to locate and track sounds in the three-dimensional world is essential for normal communication and navigation. When that ability is degraded, as with many types of hearing loss, communication is significantly disrupted. The long-term goal of this project is a complete understanding of the mechanisms and processes involved in human spatial hearing. Research conducted during previous funding periods has focused on issues related to the localization of single stationary sound sources in anechoic environments. Much has been learned from this research about the nature of the cues for sound direction and how those cues are used by human listeners. The research proposed in this application both extends and elaborates the earlier localization studies and moves into new areas such as the perception of sound source motion and the perception of source distance. The proposed methods include the virtual auditory space (VAS) technique, originally developed in the laboratory during previous funding periods, and a variant of the "conditioned-on-a-single-stimulus" (COSS) procedure, which can give quantitative estimates of the perceptual weight given by individual listeners to the various spatial cues. The new movement and distance studies will provide basic data on the discriminately and relative weighting of the various cues for movement and distance in several different stimulus conditions. The proposed localization experiments will address unanswered questions about processing of spectral cues and interaural delay cues and, in particular, about the relative weights assigned to these cues in different localization settings.