[dragonsky]

Isn't it just a matter of listening to the ambient noise in your environment. open space sounds different to a closed room. if there is any noise around you can normally tell if you are near a wall just because one ear is getting a close echo from the wall, and the other isn't.

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?

[mellavora]

Well, you could look at i.e. Daniel Kish (as mentioned above).

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."

https://visioneers.org/daniel-kish/

[blueflow]

I use echolocation myself,

> 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.