Spatial memory is a multimodal representation of the environment, which can be mediated by different sensory signals. Here we investigate how the auditory modality influences memorization, contributing to the mental representation of a scene. We designed an audio test inspired by a validated spatial memory test, the Corsi-Block test for blind individuals. The test was carried out in two different conditions, with non-semantic and semantic stimuli, presented in different sessions and displaced on an audio-tactile device. Furthermore, the semantic sounds were spatially displaced in order to reproduce an audio scene, explored by participants during the test. Thus, we verified if semantic rather than non-semantic sounds are better recalled and whether exposure to an auditory scene can enhance memorization skills. Our results show that sighted subjects performed better than blind participants after the exploration of the semantic scene. This suggests that blind participants focus on the perceived sound positions and do not use items’ locations learned during the exploration. We discuss these results in terms of the role of visual experience on spatial memorization skills and the ability to take advantage of semantic information stored in the memory.

Blindness is an ideal condition to study the role of visual input on the development of spatial representation, as studies have shown how audio space representation reorganizes in blindness. However, how spatial reorganization works is still unclear. A limitation of the study on blindness is that it is a “stable” system and it does not allow for studying the mechanisms that subtend the progress of this reorganization. To overcome this problem here we study, for the first time, audio spatial reorganization in 18 adults with macular degeneration (MD) for which the loss of vision due to scotoma is an ongoing progressive process. Our results show that the loss of vision produces immediate changes in the processing of spatial audio signals. In individuals with MD, the lateral sounds are “attracted” toward the central scotoma position resulting in a strong bias in the spatial auditory percept. This result suggests that the reorganization of audio space representation is a fast and plastic process occurring also later in life, after vision loss.

Objective: This study investigates how spatial working memory skills, and the processing and retrieval of distal auditory spatial information are influenced by visual experience. Method: We developed an experimental paradigm using an acoustic simulation. The performance of congenitally blind and sighted participants (n = 9 per group) was compared when recalling sequences of spatialised auditory items in the same or reverse order of presentation. Two experimental conditions based on stimuli features were tested: non-semantic and semantic. Results: Blind participants had a shorter memory span in the backward than the forward order of presentation. In contrast, sighted participants did not, revealing that blindness affects spatial information processing with greater executive source involvement. Furthermore, we found that blind subjects performed worse overall than the sighted group and that the semantic information significantly improved the performance, regardless of the experimental group and the sequences’ order of presentation. Conclusions: Lack of early visual experience affects the ability to encode the surrounding space. Congenital blindness influences the processing and retrieval of spatial auditory items, suggesting that visual experience plays a pivotal role in calibrating spatial memory abilities using the remaining sensory modalities.