Influence of head-to-trunk position on sound lateralization

Abstract 

The effect of horizontal head position on the lateralization of dichotic sound stimuli was investigated in four experiments. In experiment 1, subjects adjusted the interaural level difference (ILD) of a stimulus (band-pass noise) to the subjective auditory median plane (SAMP) while simultaneously directing the beam of a laser attached to the head to visual targets in various directions. The adjustments were significantly correlated with head position, shifting in a direction toward the side to which the head was turned. This result was replicated in experiment 2, which employed a two-alternative forced-choice method, in which stimuli of different ILD were presented and left/right judgments were made. In both experiments, the average magnitude of the shift of the SAMP was about 1 dB over the range of head positions from straight ahead to 60° to the side. The shift of the SAMP indicates that any shift in head position induces a change in sound lateralization in the opposite direction, i.e., the intracranial sound image is shifted slightly to the left when the head is directed to the right and to the right when the head is to the left. In experiments 3 and 4, the effect of head position was compared with that of eye position by using the same methods as in experiment 2. Both shifts in SAMP, induced by either head- or eye-position changes, are in the same direction and, on average, of about the same magnitude (experiment 3), and head- and eye-position effects compensate approximately for each other during variations of head position when the gaze remains fixed to a visual target in space (experiment 4).