Abstract:

Aurally guided visual search is a logical concept if one considers the evolutionary utility of the ability to localize sound sources, such as food or predators by primal man. The localized auditory stimulus would direct the gaze to the approximate location of the target or threat. The auditory system has a full 4(pi) sr field while the visual system is limited to about 150 deg horizontally by about 60 deg vertically. The spatial resolution of the visual system is high, while the auditory system's spatial resolution is low. A series of experiments is being conducted investigating the effects of spatial auditory cueing on visual search. This paper describes the design, methodology, and results of the first three aurally guided visual search experiments in this series. The experiments were conducted using both real and virtual spatial auditory stimuli and included visual target location acquisition and discrimination in a black visual field, visual target detection in a simple gray visual field, and visual target location acquisition and discrimination in visual fields of varying complexity. The results indicate that spatial auditory cues significantly improve performance in a visual search task in all visual environments investigated. [Work supported by AFOSR.]