Blind people exploit repetition pitch to gauge distances

Evidence

Visually impaired people often use repetition pitch to judge distance. If you create a sound and there is a wall many meters away, you will hear a distinct echo separated in time, not a pitch. But as you come closer to the surface, reflected sound arrives very quickly, say, within a few milliseconds. The repetition pitch rises as the wall is approached, since there is a smaller time delay, much too quick to detect a separate echo. If you become sensitive to repetition pitch, it can be used to judge distance quite accurately. — Eric J. Heller, Why You Hear What You Hear- An…, 2157

Categorization

Category: Causal Relationships

• SEED: Article angle: echolocation without training — the millisecond-echo pitch cue skill that any listener can learn to judge distance with.
• CANDY: A fun fact: approaching a wall, the reflected sound stops being an echo and becomes a rising pitch — easy to demo and surprise.

Related

• Echo timing is used as an auditory distance cue by the visually impaired (similarity 0.91)
• Skilled listeners can echolocate even silent objects by their sound absorption. (similarity 0.79)

Broader Connections

• Blind listeners can hear objects through their acoustic absorption. #expands (0.78) — Eric J. Heller, Why You Hear What You Hear- An…, 2540