We analyse the effects of exploration feedback on reaching measures of perceived auditory peripersonal space (APS) boundary and the auditory distance perception (ADP) of sound sources located within it. We conducted an experiment in which the participants had to estimate if a sound source was (or not) reachable and to estimate its distance (40 to 150 cm in 5-cm steps) by reaching to a small loudspeaker. The stimulus consisted of a train of three bursts of Gaussian broadband noise. Participants were randomly assigned to two groups: Experimental (EG) and Control (CG). There were three phases in the following order: Pretest–Test–Posttest. For all phases, the listeners performed the same task except for the EG-Test phase where the participants reach in order to touch the sound source. We applied models to characterise the participants’ responses and provide evidence that feedback significantly reduces the response bias of both the perceived boundary of the APS and the ADP of sound sources located within reach. In the CG, the repetition of the task did not affect APS and ADP accuracy, but it improved the performance consistency: the reachable uncertainty zone in APS was reduced and there was a tendency to decrease variability in ADP.
Principal components analysis (PCA) is frequently used for modelling the magnitude of the headrelated transfer functions (HRTFs). Assuming that the HRTFs are minimum phase systems, the phase is obtained from the Hilbert transform of the log-magnitude. In recent years, the PCA applied to HRTFs is also used to model individual HRTFs relating the PCA weights with anthropometric measurements of the head, torso and pinnae. The HRTF log-magnitude is the most used format of input data to the PCA, but it has been shown that if the input data is HRTF linear magnitude, the cumulative variance converges faster, and the mean square error (MSE) is smaller. This study demonstrates that PCA applied directly on HRTF complex values is even better than the two formats mentioned above, that is, the MSE is the smallest and the cumulative variance converges faster after the 8th principal component. Different objective experiments around all the median plane put in evidence the differences which, although small, seem to be perceptually detectable. To elucidate this point, psychoacoustic discrimination tests are done between measured and reconstructed HRTFs from the three types of input data mentioned, in the median plane between −45• and +90• .
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