Open AccessDiscrimination of 2D wall textures by passive echolocation for different reflected-to-direct level difference configurations
Author(s) -
Léopold Kritly,
Yannick Sluyts,
David Pelegrín-García,
Christ Glorieux,
Monika Rychtáriková
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
plos one
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.99
H-Index - 332
ISSN - 1932-6203
DOI - 10.1371/journal.pone.0251397
Subject(s) - human echolocation , loudness , masking (illustration) , active listening , acoustics , texture (cosmology) , two alternative forced choice , audiology , mathematics , psychology , computer science , speech recognition , communication , artificial intelligence , physics , statistics , medicine , art , image (mathematics) , visual arts
In this work, we study people’s ability to discriminate between different 2D textures of walls by passive listening to a pre-recorded tongue click in an auralized echolocation scenario. In addition, the impact of artificially enhancing the early reflection magnitude by 6dB and of removing the direct component while equalizing the loudness was investigated. Listening test results for different textures, ranging from a flat wall to a staircase, were assessed using a 2 Alternative-Forced-Choice (2AFC) method, in which 14 sighted, untrained participants were indicating 2 equally perceived stimuli out of 3 presented stimuli. The average performance of the listening subjects to discriminate between different textures was found to be significantly higher for walls at 5m distance, without overlap between the reflected and direct sound, compared to the same walls at 0.8m distance. Enhancing the reflections as well as removing the direct sound were found to be beneficial to differentiate textures. This finding highlights the importance of forward masking in the discrimination process. The overall texture discriminability was found to be larger for the walls reflecting with a higher spectral coloration.