Does minute listeners' head movement affect affective aspects of human spatial hearing perception?

2016 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 26540093
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Challenging Exploratory Research
• Allocation Type: Multi-year Fund
• Research Field: Human interface and interaction
• Research Institution: Tohoku University
• Principal Investigator: SUZUKI Yoiti 東北大学, 電気通信研究所, 教授 (20143034)
• Project Period (FY): 2014-04-01 – 2017-03-31
• Keywords: 音空間知覚 / 感性知覚 / 聴覚ディスプレイ / 臨場感 / 迫真性 / 高次感性 / 頭部運動 / 頭部回転

Outline of Final Research Achievements

This study examines the possible effects of listeners' minute head movement on the affective aspects of human spatial hearing as well as its application to the advancement of future three-dimensional (3D) auditory displays.
To clarify the characteristics of spatial hearing during minute head movement, a virtual sound source with small spatial deviation was presented via a 3D auditory display. As a result, the detection thresholds of the small spatial deviation of the position of the sound source become larger (worse) than those in the case of static sound source localisation. Moreover, this phenomenon is hardly dependent on the speed of head movement. Similar phenomenon was also observed in an experiment with a real sound source. These are very interesting results with a high impact to the research field. Moreover, these results strongly suggest that the effects of minute head movement be different between sound localisation accuracy and affective evaluation of auditory spaces.

Free Research Field

音響および多感覚情報処理