Bg. Shinncunningham et al., ADAPTING TO SUPERNORMAL AUDITORY LOCALIZATION CUES - II - CONSTRAINTSON ADAPTATION OF MEAN RESPONSE, The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 103(6), 1998, pp. 3667-3676
A series of experiments was performed in which subjects were trained t
o interpret auditory localization cues arising from locations differen
t from their normal spatial positions. The exact pattern of mean respo
nse to these alterations (as a function of time) was examined in order
to begin to develop a quantitative model of adaptation. Mean response
s were roughly proportional to the normal position:associated with the
localization cues presented. As subjects adapted, the best-fit slope
(relating mean response and normal position) changed roughly exponenti
ally with time. The exponential rate and adaptation asymptote were fou
nd for each subject in each experiment, as well as the rate and asympt
ote of readaptation to normal cues. The rate of adaptation does not sh
ow any statistical dependence on experimental conditions; however, the
asymptote of the best-fit slope varied with the strength of the trans
formation used in each experiment. This result is consistent with the
hypothesis that subjects cannot adapt to a nonlinear transformation of
auditory localization cues, but instead adapt to a linear approximati
on of the transformation. Over time, performance changes exponentially
towards the best-fit linear approximation for the transformation used
in a particular experiment, and the rate of this adaptation does not
depend upon the transformation employed. (C) 1998 Acoustical Society o
f America.