Effects of Listener ’ s Head Movement on the Accuracy of Sound Localization in Virtual Environment

In sound localization with a virtual auditory display (VAD), large perceptual errors sometimes occur when a listener’s own HRTFs are unavailable. On the other hand, the accuracy of sound localization can be improved by head movement in sound localization in a real environment. By analogy of this improvement, the accuracy of the localization in a virtual environment may be improved even when HRTFs in the VAD are not fitted to the listener. Therefore, this study addresses the effects of the accuracy of HRTFs in the VAD and listener’s head movement on sound localization. Results showed that the front-back error rate was improved by head movement irrespective of the accuracy of HRTFs. On the other hand, regarding perceived direction and distance, head movement may not affect the accuracy of localization well. Furthermore, it was interesting that total head movement with own HRTFs was smaller than that with other conditions.