"Sitting too close to the screen can be bad for your ears": A study of audio-visual location discrepancy detection under different visual projections

Walker, A. and Brewster, S.A. (2001) "Sitting too close to the screen can be bad for your ears": A study of audio-visual location discrepancy detection under different visual projections. In: 7th International Conference on Auditory Display (ICAD), Espoo, Finland, 29 July - 1 August 2001, pp. 86-89. ISBN 9512255200

Abstract

In this work, we look at the perception of event locality under conditions of disparate audio and visual cues. We address an aspect of the so called “ventriloquism effect” relevant for multi-media designers; namely, how auditory perception of event locality is influenced by the size and scale of the accompanying visual projection of those events. We observed that recalibration of the visual axes of an audio-visual animation (by resizing and zooming) exerts a recalibrating influence on the auditory space perception. In particular, sensitivity to audio-visual discrepancies (between a centrally located visual stimuli and laterally displaced audio cue) increases near the edge of the screen on which the visual cue is displayed. In other words,discrepancy detection thresholds are not fixed for a particular pair of stimuli, but are influenced by the size of the display space. Moreover, the discrepancy thresholds are influenced by scale as well as size. That is, the boundary of auditory space perception is not rigidly fixed on the boundaries of the screen; it also depends on the spatial relationship depicted. For example,the ventriloquism effect will break down within the boundaries of a large screen if zooming is used to exaggerate the proximity of the audience to the events. The latter effect appears to be much weaker than the former.

• Item Type: Conference Proceedings
• Status: Published
• Refereed: Yes
• Glasgow Author(s) Enlighten ID: Brewster, Professor Stephen
• Authors: Walker, A., and Brewster, S.A.
• Subjects: Q Science > QA Mathematics > QA76 Computer software; B Philosophy. Psychology. Religion > BF Psychology; Q Science > QP Physiology
• College/School: College of Science and Engineering > School of Computing Science
• Publisher: Laboratory of Acoustics and Audio Signal Processing and the Telecommunications Software and Multimedia Laboratory
• ISBN: 9512255200
• Copyright Holders: Copyright © 2001 Stephen A. Brewster
• First Published: First published in Proceedings of the 7th International Conference on Auditory Display
• Publisher Policy: Reproduced with the permission of the author