Abstract

Many previous studies of auditory distance have involved manipulation of the obvious physical characteristics of the target stimuli (e.g., sound level, spectral content) or the environment (e.g., conditions of reverberation). The present research examined the contribution of familarity (long-term experience) to the perception of auditory distance, while attempting to control/evaluate the influences of unavoidable physical differences among stimuli. Spectral digital recordings of different vocal "styles" were presented from a stationary loudspeaker to blindfolded male and female listeners in an acoustically absorbent (but not anechoic) space. Voices included shouts, whispers and a normal conversational style. Playback levels were adjusted to avoid extraneous sound level cues. The shouting voice was reported as appearing farthest, the whispering voice closest. The conversational voice was intermediate. In a control experiment, non-speech stimuli with spectral content similar to the most extreme differences of the whispering and shouting voices were presented to new groups of listeners. Reports of perceived distance varied for the actual voices but not for the corresponding control stimuli. The results are interpreted to suggest that the perception of auditory distance may be affected by past experience. Also, unlike many previous auditory manipulations, the use of speech sounds was capable of producing a clear over-perception of the distance to the source.