Auditory spatial localization studies with different stimuli

Abstract

Many localization studies have tested the ability of auditory spatial localization in humans. However, broadband noise sources, such as Gaussian white noise and pink noise, were usually chosen as stimuli and the distribution is sparse. In this paper, an intuitive systematic subjective evaluation method is proposed. Subjective used a laser pointer to indicate the perceived direction accurately. Except the Gaussian white noise stimuli, the auditory localization performance was also tested with 1 kHz pure-tone stimuli ranging from - 45° to + 45° in the horizontal plane. In Experiment 1, stimuli is the Gaussian white noise and is distributed with a spacing of 10° to verify that the method is accurate and suitable for the localization research. In Experiment 2 and 3, the distribution of the speakers turns closer with each other. Stimuli are the Gaussian white noise and 1 kHz pure-tone separately. All experiment results are presented and compared with other studies.