TY - JOUR
T1 - General Enhancement of Spatial Hearing in Congenitally Blind People
AU - Battal, Ceren
AU - Occelli, Valeria
AU - Bertonati, Giorgia
AU - Falagiarda, Federica
AU - Collignon, Olivier
N1 - Funding Information:
O. Collignon is a research associate at the Fond National de la Recherche Scientifique de Belgique (FRS-FNRS). We are grateful to M. Barilari, S. Cattoir, and S. Benetti for their help with data acquisition, P. Chiesa for his continuing support with the auditory hardware, J. A. Greenwood for his methodological and statistical input, and G. Costa for the illustration in Figure 1.
Publisher Copyright:
© The Author(s) 2020.
PY - 2020/9/1
Y1 - 2020/9/1
N2 - Vision is thought to support the development of spatial abilities in the other senses. If this is true, how does spatial hearing develop in people lacking visual experience? We comprehensively addressed this question by investigating auditory-localization abilities in 17 congenitally blind and 17 sighted individuals using a psychophysical minimum-audible-angle task that lacked sensorimotor confounds. Participants were asked to compare the relative position of two sound sources located in central and peripheral, horizontal and vertical, or frontal and rear spaces. We observed unequivocal enhancement of spatial-hearing abilities in congenitally blind people, irrespective of the field of space that was assessed. Our results conclusively demonstrate that visual experience is not a prerequisite for developing optimal spatial-hearing abilities and that, in striking contrast, the lack of vision leads to a general enhancement of auditory-spatial skills.
AB - Vision is thought to support the development of spatial abilities in the other senses. If this is true, how does spatial hearing develop in people lacking visual experience? We comprehensively addressed this question by investigating auditory-localization abilities in 17 congenitally blind and 17 sighted individuals using a psychophysical minimum-audible-angle task that lacked sensorimotor confounds. Participants were asked to compare the relative position of two sound sources located in central and peripheral, horizontal and vertical, or frontal and rear spaces. We observed unequivocal enhancement of spatial-hearing abilities in congenitally blind people, irrespective of the field of space that was assessed. Our results conclusively demonstrate that visual experience is not a prerequisite for developing optimal spatial-hearing abilities and that, in striking contrast, the lack of vision leads to a general enhancement of auditory-spatial skills.
KW - auditory localization
KW - blindness
KW - minimum audible angle
KW - open data
KW - open materials
KW - spatial hearing
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U2 - 10.1177/0956797620935584
DO - 10.1177/0956797620935584
M3 - Article (journal)
C2 - 32846109
AN - SCOPUS:85089870379
SN - 0956-7976
VL - 31
SP - 1129
EP - 1139
JO - Psychological Science
JF - Psychological Science
IS - 9
ER -