Right - I use echolocation (although rarely) and I can't work out why it's contentious to think that humans do.
I think most people use sound all the time to orient themselves, especially in the dark. It's just that we are so fixated on what we see that using hearing to tell what is around you gets overloaded by the higher resolution information from our eyes.
I think I would be very interesting to see good research done with blind people to see how they use their senses. Is anybody aware of such research?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Kish
"Kish's work has inspired a number of scientific studies related to human echolocation. In a 2009 study at the University of Alcalá in Madrid, Spain, ten sighted subjects were taught basic navigation skills within a few days. The study aimed to analyze various sounds which can be used to echolocate and evaluate which were most effective.[5][6] In another study, MRI brain scans were taken of Kish and another echolocation expert to identify the parts of the brain involved in echolocation, with readings suggesting "that brain structures that process visual information in sighted people process echo information in blind echolocation experts."
> Isn't it just a matter of listening to the ambient noise in your environment. open space sounds different to a closed room.
Yes. Absent of light and suitable noise, you make the noise yourself. And this is something instinctive to me, so i would assume other people could do it, too.
Echolocation is contentious because people assume it's to do with timing.
Humans can't time the echo in a room.
Echolocation by humans is using the head as a dampener between the ears to get direction/distance by diffing the ears on noise not time.
Is my understanding.
You could see why people who think it's related to timing like the classic submarine would obviously think it doesn't work with humans. You learn about the speed of sound at a young age and people know the brain can't handle that.
They might assume in a dark room people are using ambient noise and ambient echo's, not echolocation. With people using echolocation who are visually impaired in most articles they are not 100% blind so you are not sure what mix is going on.
Most articles aren't explaining this well.