PERCEIVING DISTANCES OF NEARBY SOUND SOURCES - AN INVESTIGATION OF MARLERS CANONICAL FEATURES OF LOCATABLE SOUNDS

Studies of bird calls have led to the identification of criteria that define canonical locatable and nonlocatable sounds. The generality of these criteria were investigated in 4 experiments in which human parti cipants judged the distances of nearby sound sources in cluttered surr oundings. Distance perception exhibited definite scaling with respect to actual distance but proved to be relatively unaffected by independe nt manipulations of the canonical features of locatable sounds. Of the various manipulations, frequency range and frequency modulation seeme d to be the most significant. Discussion focused on an evaluation of M arler's (1955, 1957) criteria for locatable and nonlocatable sounds, i ssues of response degrees of freedom in reporting perceived distance i n 3 dimensions, and perceptual similarities between humans and nonhuma ns.