Sight Without Light

Making sense of the space is a complex process. It becomes, even more, challenging for visually impaired people, especially in case of navigation. We are working with medical professionals to consider their physiological and neurological conditions to develop effective spatial assistance. The project aims to understand the factors that determine our spatial ability and investigate the role of alternative modalities in making sense of space, by using pitch and haptic signals to acquire information.

Goals are as following:

  1. Identify the spatial nature of auditory cues

  2. Investigate auditory representation of space

  3. Individual difference in spatial representation

  4. Compare the navigational ability between sighted and visually impaired population

  5. Develop an audio-based navigation system to enhance spatial knowledge

Common Code between Pitch and Spatial Representation

Published at Cognitive Science Society (CSS), 2018, US

Abstract: We investigated pitch-space mapping by employing the stimulus-response compatibility (SRC) paradigm. The spatial representation of pitch is tested by pairing pitch with response locations. Previous research shows that performance is better when high pitch is responded with up / right responses and low pitch is responded with down / left responses which is k/a SPARC effect. Despite intuitive coupling of perception-action, studies investigating SPARC effect have used feedback for the S-R mapping, contradicting the purpose of intuitive S-R coupling. Contradictory to previous studies, our results show strong horizontal SPARC effect in non-musicians, suggesting no role of feedback on SRC effects.