Exploring the Impact of Auditory Cues on Dynamic Balance Performance in Virtual Reality: A Comparative Study of Headphones and Loudspeakers

We present a comparative study of headphone and loudspeaker reproduction of spatial auditory cues and their influence on dynamic balance performance in healthy young adults. This study was part of a longer protocol and our long-term goal is to develop various systems, from simple home applications to advanced clinical tools, for studying and rehabilitating human movement and balance. Here we employed a ball avoidance task in a Virtual Reality (VR) environment, featuring synchronized foreground ball sounds and background distracting sounds. The sounds were delivered via two modalities: headphones or an array of loudspeakers. Participants experienced three distinct auditory conditions: Silent, Ball Sound, and Sound Distractors under two sets of instructions (guided or unguided). The findings revealed several significant differences in acceleration between protocols and in reaction time between modalities. Participants exhibited more acceleration under the Sound Distractors condition compared to the Silent condition, indicating that sounds influenced performance overall. However, under challenging conditions, healthy young adults in an urban environment are able to filter out sounds that are irrelevant to the task at hand. Some differences in reaction time between the headphones and loudspeakers (e.g., overall slower with headphones but faster with ball sounds) need to be further investigated prior to creating a fully portable headphones-based assessment.