An educational experience with motor planning and sound semantics in virtual audio reality

This paper reports an educational experience with 75 graduate students on action preparation as a function of sound semantics. In 6 hours of lesson and by working in groups, students are able to investigate modulations in motor preparation timing induced by sounds that fall within their peri-personal space (PPS) in non-visual virtual reality setting. The proposed protocol is designed so as students can learn by doing and analyze human motor planning of a simple action in reaction to approaching-looming sound sources rendered via headphones. The interesting aspect here is that we give students the opportunity to directly experience the close connection between sound and movement; in particular, auditory perception stimulated by sounds conveying different emotional contents, is modulated within the individual PPS in terms of action anticipation and distance perception.