Spatial memory is a multimodal representation of the environment, which can be mediated by different sensory signals. Here we investigate how the auditory modality influences memorization, contributing to the mental representation of a scene. We designed an audio test inspired by a validated spatial memory test, the Corsi-Block test for blind individuals. The test was carried out in two different conditions, with non-semantic and semantic stimuli, presented in different sessions and displaced on an audio-tactile device. Furthermore, the semantic sounds were spatially displaced in order to reproduce an audio scene, explored by participants during the test. Thus, we verified if semantic rather than non-semantic sounds are better recalled and whether exposure to an auditory scene can enhance memorization skills. Our results show that sighted subjects performed better than blind participants after the exploration of the semantic scene. This suggests that blind participants focus on the perceived sound positions and do not use items’ locations learned during the exploration. We discuss these results in terms of the role of visual experience on spatial memorization skills and the ability to take advantage of semantic information stored in the memory.

Spatial memory relies on encoding, storing, and retrieval of knowledge about objects’ positions in their surrounding environment. Blind people have to rely on sensory modalities other than vision to memorize items that are spatially displaced, however, to date, very little is known about the influence of early visual deprivation on a person’s ability to remember and process sound locations. To fill this gap, we tested sighted and congenitally blind adults and adolescents in an audio-spatial memory task inspired by the classical card game “Memory.” In this research, subjects (blind, n = 12; sighted, n = 12) had to find pairs among sounds (i.e., animal calls) displaced on an audio-tactile device composed of loudspeakers covered by tactile sensors. To accomplish this task, participants had to remember the spatialized sounds’ position and develop a proper mental spatial representation of their locations. The test was divided into two experimental conditions of increasing difficulty dependent on the number of sounds to be remembered (8 vs. 24). Results showed that sighted participants outperformed blind participants in both conditions. Findings were discussed considering the crucial role of visual experience in properly manipulating auditory spatial representations, particularly in relation to the ability to explore complex acoustic configurations.