Humans adapt to a room’s spatial cues through learning over hundreds of trials

Evidence

In addition to the precedence effect, there are also other mechanisms aiding the localization tasks that are not known, but their existence has been shown by the fact that the accuracy of subjects’ performance in localization tasks in rooms constantly improves with the number of trials, even after repeating several hundreds of trials (Shinn-Cunningham, 2000; Zahorik et al., 2005). The subject gathers some data on the spatial cues generated by the room and somehow adapts to them, perhaps by using templates. — Ville Pulkki, Matti Karjalainen, Communication Acoustics- An…, 1508

Categorization

• QUESTION: The ‘template’ adaptation mechanism is unnamed and unexplained — worth chasing what perceptual-learning studies reveal about this process.
• XREF: connects to: The leading explanation for human adaptability is individual improvisational intelligence — Joseph Henrich, The Secret of Our Success: How Culture…, 71