Talker head orientation discrimination using only auditory cues

Abstract

Although many studies focus on human ability to localize a sound source, less is known about human ability to determine the physical orientation of a given sound source. In our study, we assessed listeners’ ability to detect changes in talker head orientation. Participants with normal hearing were asked to detect head orientation changes (relative to 0 deg, i.e., directly facing the listener) for two male and two female talkers. We found listeners are sensitive to changes of approximately 40 deg in talker head orientation using only auditory cues. This is less sensitive than what humans have displayed with only visual cues. These findings indicate that auditory cues are available for head orientation discrimination, which may be of greater utility when visual cues are unavailable.