Reaching to Sound Accuracy in the Peri-personal Space of Blind and Sighted Humans

With the aim of designing an assistive device for the Blind, we compared the ability of blind and sighted subjects to accurately locate several types of sounds generated in the peri-personal space. Despite a putative lack of calibration of their auditory system with vision, blind subjects performed with a similar accuracy as sighted subjects. The average error was sufficiently low (10° in azimuth and 10 cm in distance) to orient a user towards a specific goal or to guide a hand grasping movement to a nearby object. Repeated white noise bursts of short duration induced better performance than continuous sounds of similar total duration. These types of sound could be advantageously used in an assistive device. They would provide indications about direction to follow or position of surrounding objects, with limited masking of environmental sounds, which are of primary importance for the Blind.

[1]  Franco Lepore,et al.  Early- and Late-Onset Blind Individuals Show Supra-Normal Auditory Abilities in Far-Space , 2004, Current Biology.

[2]  Jörg Lewald,et al.  Vertical sound localization in blind humans , 2002, Neuropsychologia.

[3]  Michel Denis,et al.  NAVIG: augmented reality guidance system for the visually impaired , 2012, Virtual Reality.

[4]  Bernard Oriola,et al.  NAVIG: Guidance system for the visually impaired using virtual augmented reality , 2012 .

[5]  Douglas S. Brungart,et al.  Three‐dimensional auditory localization of nearby sources , 1997 .

[6]  Bruce N. Walker,et al.  SPEARCONS: SPEECH-BASED EARCONS IMPROVE NAVIGATION PERFORMANCE IN AUDITORY MENUS , 2006 .

[7]  J. Cruysberg,et al.  Two-dimensional sound-localization behavior of early-blind humans , 2001, Experimental Brain Research.

[8]  Roberta L. Klatzky,et al.  Personal guidance system for the visually impaired , 1994, ASSETS.

[9]  C Veraart,et al.  Processing of auditory information by the blind in spatial localization tasks , 1985, Perception & psychophysics.

[10]  D. Brungart.  Auditory localization of nearby sources. III. Stimulus effects. , 1999, The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America.

[11]  Mathieu Raynal,et al.  Navigation and space perception assistance for the visually impaired: The NAVIG project Assistance à la navigation et à la perception de l'espace pour les déficients visuels : le projet NAVIG , 2012 .

[12]  D. M. Green,et al.  Sound localization by human listeners. , 1991, Annual review of psychology.

[13]  M. Paré,et al.  Early-blind human subjects localize sound sources better than sighted subjects , 1998, Nature.

[14]  M. P. Zwiers,et al.  A Spatial Hearing Deficit in Early-Blind Humans , 2001, The Journal of Neuroscience.

[15]  W. Hartmann,et al.  Localization of sound in rooms, III: Onset and duration effects. , 1986, The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America.

[16]  Gaëtan Parseihian,et al.  Perceptually based head-related transfer function database optimization. , 2012, The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America.

[17]  Meera Blattner,et al.  Earcons and Icons: Their Structure and Common Design Principles , 1989, Hum. Comput. Interact..

[18]  S. Hillyard,et al.  Improved auditory spatial tuning in blind humans , 1999, Nature.

[19]  A. Smit,et al.  Synapse Formation between Central Neurons Requires Postsynaptic Expression of the MEN1 Tumor Suppressor Gene , 2001, The Journal of Neuroscience.

[20]  Douglas S. Brungart.  Three-Dimensional Auditory Localization of Nearby Sources , 1998 .

[21]  J. Blauert.  Spatial Hearing: The Psychophysics of Human Sound Localization , 1983 .

[22]  W. M. Rabinowitz,et al.  Auditory localization of nearby sources. II. Localization of a broadband source. , 1999, The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America.