Adaptation to auditory-visual spatial disparity in virtual reality

Ludivine Sarlat, CNRS - UPMC UMR 7593

Abstract
After exposition to a consistent spatial disparity of auditory and visual stimuli, subjective localization of sound sources is usually shifted in the direction of visual stimuli, which is called a ventriloquism after-effect. The present study investigates if such ventriloquism after-effects can be observed after exposition to a conflicting bimodal stimulation in virtual reality (VR).
Fourteen subjects participated to an experiment in which auditory localization was assessed in darkness. Subjects were then immersed in a virtual environment by means of a head-mounted display. They were asked to reproduce sequences of movements of virtual objects. However, a spatial discrepancy of 15° was introduced between the visual event and the concurrent auditory stimulation. After 20 minutes of exposure, subjects were tested again in total darkness in order to determine whether their auditory localization system had been modified by the conflicting visual signals.
We observed that the association of virtual auditory and visual stimuli could lead to a ‘complete’ recalibration of the right auditory hemispace, including stimulus locations not presented during the VR immersion. It is therefore possible to induce a ventriloquism effect with VR, which can not be interpreted in terms of a simple visual biasing of auditory localization.

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