Distortion of auditory space during forward acceleration(Symposium 1 : Psychology of self-motion perception,The 31st Annual Meeting)

Abstract

We investigated how auditory space was represented during linear self-motion. Blindfolded participants were passively transported forward/backward by a robotic wheelchair. An array of loudspeakers was aligned parallel to the motion direction along a wall to the right of the participant. A short noise burst was presented when the participant's coronal plane reached the location of one of the speakers (null point). In Experiment 1, the participants indicated which direction the sound was presented, forward or backward relative to their coronal plane. The results showed that the sound position aligned with the subjective coronal plane was displaced ahead of the null point only during forward acceleration. In Experiment 2, the participants indicated, by pointing a rod, the perceived location of the sound that was presented at various distances from the null point. All the sounds that were actually located in the direction of movement were perceived as being closer to the null point. These findings suggest the compression of auditory space representations during forward accelerations.