Auditory looming perception: influences on anticipatory judgments

Several studies in the auditory-perception literature hint that listeners may be able to anticipate the time of arrival of an approaching sound source. Two experiments are reported in which listeners judged the time of arrival of an approaching car on the basis of various portions of its auditory signal. Subjects pressed a computer key to indicate when the car would have just passed them, assuming that the car maintained a constant approach velocity. A number of variables were tested including (a) the time between the offset of the signal and the virtual time of passage, (b) duration of the signal, and (c) feedback concerning judgment accuracy. Results indicate that increasing the time between signal offset and virtual time of passage decreases judgment accuracy whereas the actual duration of the signal had no significant effect. Feedback significantly improved performance overall.