In time-critical eXtended reality (XR) scenarios where users must rapidly reorient their attention to hazards, alerts, or instructions while engaged in a primary task, spatial audio can provide an immediate directional cue without occupying visual bandwidth. However, such scenarios can afford only a brief auditory exposure, requiring users to interpret sound direction quickly and without extended listening or head-driven refinement. This paper reports a controlled exploratory study of rapid spatial-audio localization in XR. Using HRTF-rendered broadband stimuli presented from a semi-dense set of directions around the listener, we quantify how accurately users can infer coarse direction from brief audio alone. We further examine the effects of short-term visuo-auditory feedback training as a lightweight calibration mechanism. Our findings show that brief spatial cues can convey coarse directional information, and that even short calibration can improve users' perception of aural signals. While these results highlight the potential of spatial audio for rapid attention guidance, they also show that auditory cues alone may not provide sufficient precision for complex or high-stakes tasks, and that spatial audio may be most effective when complemented by other sensory modalities or visual cues, without relying on head-driven refinement. We leverage this study on spatial audio as a preliminary investigation into a first-stage attention-guidance channel for wearable XR (e.g., VR head-mounted displays and AR smart glasses), and provide design insights on stimulus selection and calibration for time-critical use.

翻译：在时间紧迫的扩展现实（XR）场景中，用户在执行主要任务的同时必须快速将注意力重新定向至危险、警报或指令，空间音频能够在不占用视觉带宽的情况下提供即时方向线索。然而，此类场景通常仅允许短暂的听觉暴露，要求用户无需长时间聆听或依赖头部转动优化即可快速解析声音方向。本文报告了一项关于XR中快速空间音频定位的受控探索性研究。通过使用HRTF渲染的宽带刺激声，从听者周围半密集方向集呈现，我们量化了用户仅凭短暂音频推断粗略方向的准确度。我们进一步研究了短期视听反馈训练作为轻量级校准机制的效果。研究结果表明，简短的空间线索能够传递粗略方向信息，且即使短期校准也能改善用户对听觉信号的感知。虽然这些结果凸显了空间音频在快速注意力引导方面的潜力，但也表明仅凭听觉线索可能无法为复杂或高风险任务提供足够精度，空间音频在与其它感官模态或视觉线索互补、且不依赖头部转动优化时可能最为有效。我们以这项空间音频研究作为对可穿戴XR设备（如VR头戴显示器与AR智能眼镜）初级注意力引导通道的初步探索，并为时间紧迫场景下的刺激选择与校准提供了设计见解。