An Experimental Evaluation of the Influence of Auditory Cues on Perceived Visual Orders in Depth

We present an experiment investigating the influence of auditory cues on visual perceived orders in depth. Visual stimuli consisted in a layered 2D drawing of two squares respectively blue and red using semi-transparency. Auditory signals of the two words “red” and “blue” were presented simultaneously to the images. Subjects were required to determine which square appeared in front of the other in these cross-modal conditions. The coefficient of transparency as well as the audio level difference between the two speech signals “red” and “blue” were systematically varied. No significant influence of auditory cues on perceived order in depth was found, except when the visual information was totally ambiguous: in this case, the perceived order showed limited dependence on the acoustic information.