Factors affecting auditory estimates of virtual room size: Effects of stimulus, level, and reverberation

When vision is unavailable, auditory level and reverberation cues provide important spatial information regarding the environment, such as the size of a room. We investigated how room size estimates were affected by stimulus type, level and reverberation. In Experiment 1, fifteen blindfolded participants estimated room size after performing a distance bisection task in virtual rooms that were either anechoic (with level cues only) or reverberant (with level and reverberation cues) with a relatively short reverberation time of T60 = 400 ms. Speech, noise, or clicks were presented at distances between 1.9 and 7.1 m. The reverberant room was judged to be significantly larger than the anechoic room (p