Graduate School of Informatics /Cognitive Science

In partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science Özgen Demirkaplan will defend his thesis.

Title: EFFECTS OF VOICE FAMILIARITY ON AUDITORY DISTANCE PERCEPTION

Date: 20th June 2017

Time: 14:00 PM

Place: A-108

Thesis Abstract : Alongside the audible content of sound sources, human auditory system also provides the necessary cues enabling humans to perceive the direction and determine the range of sound sources, thereby allowing the recognition of spatial context. While the body of knowledge on the directional localisation of sound sources is extensive, less is known about the auditory and cognitive cues that allow distance perception. One such cognitive cue is auditory familiarity: Humans can judge the distances of familiar sound sources more accurately. In other words, the level of familiarity with a sound modulates the distance perception accuracy. However, auditory familiarity is not a rigorously defined property of sound sources. No objective or subjective scale exists that can reliably be used to assess familiarity of a subject with a given sound source. This makes a rigorous study of the effects of auditory familiarity on distance perception impossible. In order to assess this aspect of distance perception, this thesis aims 1) to develop an objective scale for auditory familiarity based on behavioural experiment , and 2) to investigate the effects of auditory familiarity on distance perception using source signals whose auditory familiarity can be compared by using the developed familiarity scale. This study investigates that whether the auditory distance perception can be enhanced by a sound source coming from a personally familiar voice.