ABSTRACT
This study investigates how direction of gaze, varied by changing head orientation relative to a sound source, effects the estimation of the distance of the sound source. The stimulus materials, consisting of single words, were recorded binaurally using a dummy head in a small reverberant room. The results show that subjects’ distance estimation for a transient sound stimulus is accurate up to five metres. Overall, performance was not effected by head orientation. There was some evidence which suggested that subjects overestimated distance when the head ‘faced’ the sound source and underestimated of distance when the head was turned away from the source. The results suggests that adding binaural information to computer generated visual information, for example in virtual reality systems, can overcome problems of distance scaling in space perception and enhance the perception of location and depth.
