The role of spatial location in auditory search

The majority of research findings to date indicate that spatial cues play a minor role in enhancing listeners’ ability to parse and detect a sound of interest when it is presented in a complex auditory scene comprising multiple simultaneous sounds. Frequency and temporal differences between sound streams provide more reliable cues for scene analysis as well as for directing attention to relevant auditory ‘objects’ in complex displays. The present study used naturalistic sounds with varying spectro-temporal profiles to examine whether spatial separation of sound sources can enhance target detection in an auditory search paradigm. The arrays of sounds were presented in virtual auditory space over headphones. The results of Experiment 1 suggest that target detection is enhanced when sound sources are spatially separated relative to when they are presented at the same location. Experiment 2 demonstrated that this effect is most prominent within the first 250 ms of exposure to the array of sounds. These findings suggest that spatial cues may be effective for enhancing early processes such as stream segregation, rather than simply directing attention to objects that have already been segmented.