Echo timing is used as an auditory distance cue by the visually impaired

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

• XREF: Connects to sonar/bat echolocation and to how sound reflection fundamentally differs from pitch hearing — a mechanism-level bridge between echo and pitch.
• SEED: Could underpin an article on how everyday environmental acoustics (echo delay, repetition pitch) give humans a hidden spatial sense we never notice.