PROCEEDINGS of the23rd International Congress on Acoustics
9 to 13 September 2019 in Aachen, Germany

Echoidentification: using reflected sound to identify objects andtheir characteristics
Dawn L. ANDERSON1; Sarahelizabeth J. BAGUHN2
1

Western Michigan University USA

ABSTRACT
People who are blind and visually impaired use a wide variety of sensory information to understand the world
around them. Hearing is a particularly useful sense because of the range. Many persons who are blind orvisually impaired use some form of echolocation to monitor the space around them. The sound of a cane tipreflected off a wall is a common way to keep a straight path without trailing.
Orientation and Mobility specialists teach clients to make a crisp clicking sound, and attend to thereflections of that sound. Students with varying levels of hearing have demonstrated the ability to discern a
difference in sound to identify the presence of an object. Clients can be trained to go beyond just locating
the objects reflecting sound. The relative sound and distance to the object, it’s overall shape, as well as it’s
hardness can be discerned. This process of identifying the properties of an object may be referred to asechoidentification. This skill is very useful in identifying where doorways are while walking along a cityblock. The leafiness of a bush sounds different than the wood of a bench.
A demonstration of echoidentification will be part of this presentation.
Keywords: Reflected Sound, Echolocation, Echoidentification

1. INTRODUCTION
What do you know about Echolocation?
Misconceptions
New Name
1.1 Echoidentification Umbrella
Human echolocation
Human sonar/biosonar
Active echolocation/sonar
Location of objects
Finding acoustic gaps/openings
Material properties1.2

12

Who Can Echoidentify?
Everyone
BlindSighed
No need to have perfect or binaural hearing

dawn.l.anderson@wmich.edu
s.j.baguhn@wmich.edu

819

1.3

What can be detected?
Size and Distance
ShapesMaterial Properties

1.4

What is the Area that can be detected by clients who are new to echoidentification,

after initial instruction in using clicking to identify the presence of an object?
Study to be completed during Summer 2019
Results and their implication will be reported at ICA
1.5

Teaching Echoidentification
The click
Introduction and shaping of skills
Active and passive1.6 References• 1. Johnson, T., & Louchart, J. (2012). Beginner's Guide to Echolocation: Learning to See WithYour Ears: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform.
• 2. Kish, D. (2009). Human echolocation: How to "see" like a bat. New Scientist, 202(2703), 31-33.
doi:10.1016/S0262-4079(09)60997-0• 3. Kolarik, A. J., Cirstea, S., Pardhan, S., & Moore, B. C. (2014). A summary of research
investigating echolocation abilities of blind and sighted humans. Hearing research, 310, 60-68.
doi:10.1016/j.heares.2014.01.010• 4. Nilsson, M. E., & Schenkman, B. N. (2016). Blind people are more sensitive than sighted people
to binaural sound-location cues, particularly inter-aural level differences. Hearing research, 332,
223-232. doi:10.1016/j.heares.2015.09.012• 5. Tonelli, A., Brayda, L., & Gori, M. (2016). Depth Echolocation Learnt by Novice SightedPeople. PloS one, 11(6), e0156654. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0156654

2. CONCLUSIONS
Orientation and Mobility Specialists are encourage to teach echoidentification
Expand the language and build nomenclature for these techniques and experiences.
Include in scope of practice for all O&M professionals

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Thank you to the chair of the Department of Blindness and Low Vision Studies at WMU forsupporting the travel to share these results.

(An outline of this work is submitted in place of a paper at the request of the ICA conference
planners. New research in this area is underway and previous work has been presented and published.)

820