Spatial hearing: models, and functions

Spatial hearing is a part of central auditory system abilities that allows localization and understanding speech in noise for listener. Spatial hearing makes the listener capable to pay selective attention to sounds arriving from one direction and meanwhile suppressing sounds arriving from other directions. The purpose of this study is to review the articles about basics، models and functions of spatial hearing. For this study Pub med، Scopus، proquest، and google scholar databases were searched by key words like spatial hearing; spatial advantage and other words related to spatial processing and several dozens of papers about spatial hearing were chosen. Spatial hearing is proposed as a new processing phenomenon and has several functions. A huge body of information has appeared about it in the literature during past years. Spatial hearing is based on binaural hearing and its application in different fields like “cocktail party effect”، central auditory processing، lateralization and distance perception has been under focus recently. Given the importance and functions of spatial hearing in auditory processing، especially in complex environments، assessment، treatment and rehabilitation of spatial processing disorders can solve a considerable part of central auditory processing disorder complaints.