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Audiomotor adaptation remaps spatial-auditory representations

Poster Session D - Monday, March 9, 2026, 8:00 – 10:00 am PDT, Fairview/Kitsilano Ballrooms

Angela Peng¹ (angelaytpeng@gmail.com), Yoonsoo Ham¹, Woonju Park², Hee Yeon Im^1,3; ¹University of British Columbia, ²Georgia Institute of Technology, ³BC Children’s Hospital Research Institute

Humans interact with dynamic environments in which previously familiar movements may yield unexpected outcomes. Sensorimotor adaptation illustrates this process, involving the recalibration of motor commands based on sensory feedback. Although extensively studied in the visual domain, far less is known about audiomotor adaptation. This research investigated whether audiomotor adaptation in the absence of visual input is sufficient to alter spatial-auditory mappings. Participants with healthy vision and hearing interacted with a 9x9 grid space by moving a computer mouse to learn the mapping between spatial locations and auditory feedback. Each grid produced a unique sound varying in frequency and amplitude. Learning was assessed by asking participants, while blindfolded, to locate target grids after hearing specific sounds. In the subsequent reaching task, participants’ cursor movements produced continuous feedback sounds based on the learned spatial-auditory mapping. After a baseline block, a 30° cursor rotation was introduced, creating a mismatch between expected and actual auditory feedback. After the reaching task, grid-sound mappings were tested again. For the reaching task, participants’ performance showed increased accuracy, faster movements, and shorter, more linear trajectories across runs, indicating they learned to adapt to auditory feedback. Critically, participants with greater adaptation showed increased errors in the post-grid-sound mapping test compared with the pre-test, suggesting remapping of spatial representations after audiomotor adaptation. These findings demonstrate that sensorimotor adaptation can occur with auditory feedback alone and can reshape spatial–auditory representations in sighted individuals who predominantly rely on vision, supporting the idea that sensorimotor adaptation may operate through modality-general learning mechanisms.

Topic Area: PERCEPTION & ACTION: Audition