Perceived auditory dynamic range is enhanced with wrist-based tactile stimulation.

Abstract

Tactile stimulation has been shown to increase auditory loudness judgments in listeners. This bias could be utilized to enhance perception for people with deficiencies in auditory intensity perception, such as cochlear implant users. However, several aspects of this enhancement remain uncertain. For instance, does the tactile stimulation need to be applied to the hand or body, or can it be applied to the wrist? Furthermore, can the tactile stimulation both amplify and attenuate the perceived auditory loudness? To address these questions, two loudness-matching experiments were conducted. Participants matched a comparison auditory stimulus with an auditory reference, either with or without spectro-temporally identical tactile stimulation. In the first experiment, fixed-level tactile stimulation was administered to the wrist during the comparison stimulus to assess whether perceived auditory loudness increased. The second experiment replicated the same conditions but introduced tactile stimulation to both the reference and comparison, aiming to investigate the potential decrease in perceived auditory loudness when the two tactile accompaniments were incongruent between the reference and comparison. The results provide evidence supporting the existence of the tactile loudness bias in each experiment and are a step towards wrist-based haptic devices that modulate the auditory dynamic range for a user.