Effects of Sound Type on Recreating the Trajectory of a Moving Source

The ABBI (Audio Bracelet for Blind Interaction) device is designed for visually impaired and blind children to wear on the wrist and produce sound based on the movement of the arm through space. The primary function is to inform a child (or adult) about his/her own movements to aid spatial cognition rehabilitation. However, the device could also be worn by friends and family and be used to inform the visually impaired person of others' movement in the environment. In this paper, we describe an initial experiment that measured how well blindfolded sighted individuals could track a moving sound source in 2D horizontal space and then walk the same route to the same end position. Six sounds, including natural sounds, abstract sounds, Earcons and speech, were compared to identify which type of sound produced more accurate route recreation