Auditory environmental context affects visual distance perception

• Autores: Vergara, Ramiro; Abregú, Ezequiel; Etchemendy, Pablo; Eguía, Manuel; Calcagno, Esteban; Vechiatti, Nilda Susana; Iasi, Federico Martín
• Año de publicación: 2016
• Idioma: inglés
• Tipo de recurso: documento de conferencia
• Materia: Óptica, Acústica; visual distance perception; multimodal integration; auditory perception
• Institución: Comisión de Investigaciones Científicas de la Provincia de Buenos Aires

To perceive the distance to an object through the visual modality, an observer uses a variety of cues, many of which may not be directly related to the target. This is illustrated by the fact that in a well-lit environment (with multiple visual cues) visual distance perception (VDP) is relatively accurate, whereas in a dark environment (where the observer can only see the target) VDP be- comes inaccurate. Besides, a number of recent studies indicate that VDP is not only affected by the availability and reliability of depth cues, but also can be influenced by the context even in the presence of multiple visual cues. Here we provide evidence that VDP is influenced by the auditory environmental context through reverberation-related cues. We conducted VDP experi- ments in two dark rooms with extremely different reverberation times: an anechoic chamber and a reverberant room. We first show that the distance to a visual object located in the reverberant chamber was perceived significantly farther than the same target located at the same distance in the anechoic chamber. The results also show that the maximum distance perceived by partic- ipants correlated significantly with the perceived size of the room. In addition, participants who performed the experiment in the reverberant room reported a perceived size greater than those who performed the experiment in the anechoic chamber although both rooms are of similar sizes. Secondly we note that by separating participants between musicians and non-musicians only the former group perceived differences in the size of the room through auditory modality; moreover, only this group perceived the distance to the visual object in the reverberant chamber farther than in the anechoic chamber. On the other hand, the group of non-musicians did not perceive dif- ferences in the size of both rooms or in the perceived distance in both chambers. These results show that the auditory environment can influence the VDP, presumably by reverberation cues related to auditory perception of the size of a room.