Can visual capture of sound separate auditory streams?

In noisy contexts, sound discrimination improves when the auditory sources are separated in space. This phenomenon, named Spatial Release from Masking (SRM), arises from the interaction between the auditory information reaching the ear and spatial attention resources. To examine the relative contrib...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Experimental brain research 2022-03, Vol.240 (3), p.813-824
Main Authors: Valzolgher, Chiara, Giovanelli, Elena, Sorio, Roberta, Rabini, Giuseppe, Pavani, Francesco
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Acoustic Stimulation
Analysis
Audio-visual education
Auditory discrimination
Biomedical and Life Sciences
Biomedicine
Brain stimulation
Ear
Ears & hearing
Female
Hearing
Humans
Methods
Neurology
Neurosciences
Noise
Perceptual Masking
Research Article
Sensory integration
Sound
Sound masking
Speech
Speech Perception
Visual discrimination
Visual perception
Visual stimuli
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Summary:In noisy contexts, sound discrimination improves when the auditory sources are separated in space. This phenomenon, named Spatial Release from Masking (SRM), arises from the interaction between the auditory information reaching the ear and spatial attention resources. To examine the relative contribution of these two factors, we exploited an audio-visual illusion in a hearing-in-noise task to create conditions in which the initial stimulation to the ears is held constant, while the perceived separation between speech and masker is changed illusorily (visual capture of sound). In two experiments, we asked participants to identify a string of five digits pronounced by a female voice, embedded in either energetic (Experiment 1) or informational (Experiment 2) noise, before reporting the perceived location of the heard digits. Critically, the distance between target digits and masking noise was manipulated both physically (from 22.5 to 75.0 degrees) and illusorily, by pairing target sounds with visual stimuli either at same (audio-visual congruent) or different positions (15 degrees offset, leftward or rightward: audio-visual incongruent). The proportion of correctly reported digits increased with the physical separation between the target and masker, as expected from SRM. However, despite effective visual capture of sounds, performance was not modulated by illusory changes of target sound position. Our results are compatible with a limited role of central factors in the SRM phenomenon, at least in our experimental setting. Moreover, they add to the controversial literature on the limited effects of audio-visual capture in auditory stream separation.
ISSN:0014-4819
1432-1106
DOI:10.1007/s00221-021-06281-8