Learning Reverberation: Considerations for Spatial Auditory Displays

Barbara Shinn-Cunningham Depts. of Cognitive and Neural Systems and Biomedical Engineering Boston University 677 Beacon St. Boston, MA, 02215 USA +1 617 353 8693 [email protected] ABSTRACT Reverberation has both beneficial and detrimental effects on auditory localization. This paper reviews evidence that listeners adapt to the reverberation in a room. Results show that reverberation degrades perception of source direction, but with experience in a given room, performance improves. Reverberation enhances distance perception but distance accuracy still improves with experience. (The importance of reverberation for distance perception can be heard in the accompanying demonstration.) These results are considered along with results from previous studies investigating how past experience affects spatial perception. Implications for learning mechanisms and for the design of auditory displays are discussed.