Maintaining realism in auditory length-perception experiments

Humans are capable of hearing the lengths of wooden rods dropped onto hard floors. In an attempt to understand the influence of the stimulus presentation method for testing this kind of everyday listening task, listener performance was compared for three presentation methods in an auditory length-estimation experiment.

A comparison of the length-estimation accuracy for the three presentation methods indicates that the choice of presentation method is important for maintaining realism and for maintaining the acoustic cues utilized by listeners in perceiving length.