Learning to echolocate in sighted people: a correlational study on attention, working memory and spatial abilities

Abstract

Echolocation can be beneficial for the orientation and mobility of visually impaired people. Research has shown considerable individual differences for acquiring this skill. However, individual characteristics that affect the learning of echolocation are largely unknown. In the present study, we examined individual factors that are likely to affect learning to echolocate: sustained and divided attention, working memory, and spatial abilities. To that aim, sighted participants with normal hearing performed an echolocation task that was adapted from a previously reported size-discrimination task. In line with existing studies, we found large individual differences in echolocation ability. We also found indications that participants were able to improve their echolocation ability. Furthermore, we found a significant positive correlation between improvement in echolocation and sustained and divided attention, as measured in the PASAT. No significant correlations were found with our tests regarding working memory and spatial abilities. These findings may have implications for the development of guidelines for training echolocation that are tailored to the individual with a visual impairment.

Auditory Feedback for Navigation with Echoes in Virtual Environments: Training Procedure and Orientation Strategies

“…Participants were clicking less during exposure to RR compared to RV and RF. This might indicate that the information was more substantial in RR condition [16]. Nonetheless, compared to group CM, participants clicked more, which might indicate that they needed more information from the environment than group CM did, or that they were unable to derive as much information from each click.…”

“…Notably, in the absence of visual cues, head and body movements also play an important role in relation to auditory perception of space during navigation [29]. It has been noticed that sighted people are able to learn echolocation as well [16,47,52]. In the presence of two closely spaced audio signals some information gets suppressed, which influences echolocation quality, especially when visual feedback is present.…”

“…Thus, for a successful process of learning echolocation it would be feasible to remove all visuals after a certain amount of training and leave the participants to rely only on spatial audio navigation. Nonetheless, large individual differences in spatial abilities, spatial hearing skills, and familiarity with the VR equipment also play a critical role, requiring a longer learning period for obtaining acquired echolocation skills [16].…”

Effects of Visual Working Memory on Individual Differences in Echolocation Performance in Sighted Participants

“…Rather, their focus was on the differences in improvements in echolocation performance due to training. Moreover, even though the central executive component would contribute to the learning of size discrimination (Ekkel et al., 2017), the processing of echolocation relates to spatial perception; thus, the process should involve the spatial component of working memory. Thus, further investigation is required to examine whether echolocation performance is linked to the capacity of spatial working memory, rather than central executive functions.…”

EchoVis: Training Echolocation Using Binaural Recordings – Initial Benchmark Results

“…Although human echolocation is a confirmed and relatively well-documented phenomenon [1,2,8,9], the exact capabilities of average sighted or blind persons, and methods of teaching it to new students are not yet well studied [5,6,15]. A number of nearly "superhuman" echolocators are well known in the blind community [12] and sometimes offer training courses [4], which mainly consist of "tough love" training regimens in real-world environments that force students to utilize their sense of hearing [3].…”