Showing papers by "Qian Janice Wang published in 2020"

A Dash of Virtual Milk: Altering Product Color in Virtual Reality Influences Flavor Perception of Cold-Brew Coffee.

Abstract: It is well known that the appearance of food, particularly its color, can influence flavor perception and identification. However, food studies involving the manipulation of product color face inevitable limitations, from extrinsic flavors introduced by food coloring to the cost in development time and resources in order to produce different product variants. One solution lies in modern virtual reality (VR) technology, which has become increasingly accessible, sophisticated, and widespread over the past years. In the present study, we investigated whether making a coffee look milkier in a VR environment can alter its perceived flavor and liking. Thirty-two United Kingdom (UK) consumers were given four samples of black cold brew coffee at 4 and 8% sucrose concentration. They wore VR headsets throughout the study and viewed the same coffee in a virtual setting. The color of the beverage was manipulated in VR, such that participants saw either a dark brown or light brown liquid as they sipped the coffee. A full factorial design was used so that each participant tasted each sweetness x color combination, Participants reported sweetness, creaminess, and liking for each sample. Results revealed that beverage color as viewed in VR significantly influenced perceived creaminess, with the light brown coffee rated to be creamier than dark brown coffee. However, beverage color did not influence perceived sweetness or liking. The present study supports the role of VR as a means of conducting food perception studies, either to gain a better understanding of multisensory integration, or, from an industry perspective, to enable rapid product testing when it may be time-intensive or costly to produce the same range of products in the real-world. Furthermore, it opens potential future opportunities for VR to promote healthy eating behavior by manipulating the visual appearance of foods.

Timing is everything: Onset timing moderates the crossmodal influence of background sound on taste perception.

Abstract: Recent evidence demonstrates that the presentation of crossmodally corresponding auditory stimuli can modulate the taste and hedonic evaluation of various foods (an effect often called "sonic seasoning"). To further understand the mechanism underpinning such crossmodal effects, the time at which a soundtrack was presented relative to tasting was manipulated in a series of experiments. Participants heard two soundtracks corresponding to sweet and bitter tastes either exclusively during or after chocolate tasting (Experiment 1) or during and before chocolate tasting (Experiment 2). The results revealed that the soundtracks affected chocolate taste ratings only if they were presented before or during tasting but not if they were heard after tasting. Moreover, participants' individual soundtrack-taste association mediated the strength of the sonic seasoning effect. These results therefore imply that the modulatory effect of sound on taste was not driven by retrospective interpretation of the taste experience, but by mechanisms such as priming and crossmodal association. Taken together, these studies demonstrate the complex interplay of cognitive mechanisms that likely underlie sonic seasoning effects. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).

The Effects of Ethnically Congruent Music on Eye Movements and Food Choice—A Cross-Cultural Comparison between Danish and Chinese Consumers

Abstract: Musical fit refers to the congruence between music and attributes of a food or product in context, which can prime consumer behavior through semantic networks in memory. The vast majority of research on this topic dealing with musical fit in a cultural context has thus far been limited to monocultural groups in field studies, where uncontrolled confounds can potentially influence the study outcome. To overcome these limitations, and in order to explore the effects of ethnically congruent music on visual attention and food choice across cultures, the present study recruited 199 participants from China (n = 98) and Denmark (n = 101) for an in-laboratory food choice paradigm with eye-tracking data collection. For each culture group, the study used a between-subject design with half of the participants listening to only instrumental "Eastern" music and the other half only listening to instrumental "Western" music, while both groups engaged in a food choice task involving "Eastern" and "Western" food. Chi-square tests revealed a clear ethnic congruency effect between music and food choice across culture, whereby Eastern (vs. Western) food was chosen more during the Eastern music condition, and Western (vs. Eastern) food was chosen more in the Western music condition. Furthermore, results from a generalized linear mixed model suggested that Chinese participants fixated more on Western (vs. Eastern) food when Western music was played, whereas Danish participants fixated more on Eastern (vs. Western) food when Eastern music was played. Interestingly, no such priming effects were found when participants listened to music from their own culture, suggesting that music-evoked visual attention may be culturally dependent. Collectively, our findings demonstrate that ambient music can have a significant impact on consumers' explicit and implicit behaviors, while at the same time highlighting the importance of culture-specific sensory marketing applications in the global food industry.

The Influence of Emotion-Oriented Extrinsic Visual and Auditory Cues on Coffee Perception: A Virtual Reality Experiment

Abstract: Eating is a process that involves all senses. Recent research has shown that both food-intrinsic and extrinsic sensory factors play a role in the taste of the food we consume. Moreover, many studies have explored the relationship between emotional state and taste perception, where certain emotional states have been shown to alter the perception of basic tastes. This opens up a whole new world of possibilities for the design of eating environments which take into account both sensory attributes as well as their emotional associations. Here, we used virtual reality to study the effect of colours and music, with specific emotional associations, on the evaluation of cold brew coffee. Based on an online study (N=76), two colours and two pieces of music with similar emotional arousal but opposing valence ratings were chosen to produce a total of eight virtual coloured environments. Forty participants were recruited for the on-site experiment, which consisted of three blocks. First, a blind tasting of four coffee samples (0%, 2.5%, 5%, 7.5% sucrose) was carried out. Next, participants experienced the eight environments via an HTC Vive Pro headset and evaluated their expected liking, sweetness and bitterness of a mug of coffee presented in VR. Finally, they tasted identical 5% coffee samples in the same eight environments. Results revealed One of the key findings of this study that, when only one factor (colour or music) was manipulated, background colour significantly influenced coffee liking. When colour and music were used in combination, however, we found an overall effect of music valence on coffee sweetness, as well as an interaction effect of colour and music on liking. These results reinforce the importance of the extrinsic sensory and emotion factors on food expectations and liking. Overall, these results are in line with previous research , where positive emotions can lead to increased food liking and higher sweetness compared to negative emotions.