A novel tactile technology enables sound source identification by hearing-impaired individuals in a complex 3D audio environment

Congenitally hearing-impaired individuals have reduced auditory localization capabilities and often find identification of sources to be challenging in noisy environments. The congenital nature of their hearing-impairment and the fact that hearing is the only modality capable of representing the full three-dimensional surrounding, mean this population have never experienced a proper representation of their spatial surrounding. We use an inhouse tactile device, which performs level weighting to four vibration actuators to the fingers to reproduce spatial positions and Higher-order Ambisonics to test congenitally hearing-impaired and typically-hearing individuals on their ability to pair between localized tactile information and audio sources within a complex three-dimensional audio environment. Participants of both groups show accuracy significantly higher than chance, with the typically hearing performing better than the hearing impaired. We further see rapid improvement in the task with no training. We discuss the importance of our findings within the discourse of sensory binding and assistive development towards rehabilitation.