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Six Degrees of Auditory Spatial Separation

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Abstract

The location of a sound is derived computationally from acoustical cues rather than being inherent in the topography of the input signal, as in vision. Since Lord Rayleigh, the descriptions of that representation have swung between “labeled line” and “opponent process” models. Employing a simple variant of a two-point separation judgment using concurrent speech sounds, we found that spatial discrimination thresholds changed nonmonotonically as a function of the overall separation. Rather than increasing with separation, spatial discrimination thresholds first declined as two-point separation increased before reaching a turning point and increasing thereafter with further separation. This “dipper” function, with a minimum at 6 ° of separation, was seen for regions around the midline as well as for more lateral regions (30 and 45 °). The discrimination thresholds for the binaural localization cues were linear over the same range, so these cannot explain the shape of these functions. These data and a simple computational model indicate that the perception of auditory space involves a local code or multichannel mapping emerging subsequent to the binaural cue coding.

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Acknowledgments

This work was supported by the Australian Research Council Grants DP110104579 to Carlile and DP120101474 to Alais. The authors would like to thank Ella Fu Wong for experimental assistance and Jennifer Bizley and David McAlpine for comments and discussion on an earlier version of the manuscript.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Medical Sciences, University of Sydney, Sydney, NSW, 2006, Australia

    Simon Carlile, Alex Fox, Emily Orchard-Mills & Johahn Leung

  2. Bosch Institute, University of Sydney, Sydney, NSW, 2006, Australia

    Simon Carlile

  3. School of Psychology, University of Sydney, Sydney, NSW, 2006, Australia

    Emily Orchard-Mills & David Alais

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  1. Simon Carlile
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  2. Alex Fox
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  3. Emily Orchard-Mills
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Correspondence to Simon Carlile.

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Carlile, S., Fox, A., Orchard-Mills, E. et al. Six Degrees of Auditory Spatial Separation. JARO 17, 209–221 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10162-016-0560-1

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