Eating with our ears: assessing the importance of the sounds of consumption on our perception and enjoyment of multisensory flavour experiences
TL;DR: A growing body of research now shows that by synchronizing eating sounds with the act of consumption, one can change a person's experience of what they think that they are eating.
Abstract: Sound is the forgotten flavour sense. You can tell a lot about the texture of a food—think crispy, crunchy, and crackly—from the mastication sounds heard while biting and chewing. The latest techniques from the field of cognitive neuroscience are revolutionizing our understanding of just how important what we hear is to our experience and enjoyment of food and drink. A growing body of research now shows that by synchronizing eating sounds with the act of consumption, one can change a person’s experience of what they think that they are eating.
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TL;DR: This Perspective explores the contributions of distinct senses to the authors' perception of food and the growing realization that the same rules of multisensory integration that have been thoroughly explored in interactions between audition, vision, and touch may also explain the combination of the (admittedly harder to study) flavor senses.
279 citations
Cites background from "Eating with our ears: assessing the..."
...It is almost 60 years since researchers first started thinking about the putative role of audition in the experience of food and drink (see Spence, 2015, for a review)....
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...Hearing always comes at the bottom of the list when people—whether they be professional sensory scientists or regular consumers—are asked to rank the relative importance of each of the senses to flavor perception (see Spence, 2015 on this point)....
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...It is important to remember that disconfirmed expectations can occur in both the sensory-discriminative and hedonic domains (Zellner et al., 2004; see Piqueras-Fiszman and Spence, 2015 for a review)....
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...In the intervening years, a large body of sensory science research has been published, demonstrating that auditory cues do indeed play an important role in the multisensory perception of food attributes such as crispy, crackly, crunchy, carbonated, and even creamy (see Spence, 2015)....
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...…(that hasmost typically been studied in the laboratory), in the real world, cognitive factors such as branding, labeling, packaging, and pricing also play an important role in determining our sensory-discriminative and hedonic expectations (see Piqueras-Fiszman and Spence, 2015 for a review)....
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TL;DR: In this article, a large body of laboratory research has demonstrated that changing the hue or intensity/saturation of the colour of food and beverage items can exert a sometimes dramatic impact on the expectations, and hence on the subsequent experiences, of consumers.
Abstract: Colour is the single most important product-intrinsic sensory cue when it comes to setting people’s expectations regarding the likely taste and flavour of food and drink. To date, a large body of laboratory research has demonstrated that changing the hue or intensity/saturation of the colour of food and beverage items can exert a sometimes dramatic impact on the expectations, and hence on the subsequent experiences, of consumers (or participants in the lab). However, should the colour not match the taste, then the result may well be a negatively valenced disconfirmation of expectation. Food colours can have rather different meanings and hence give rise to differing expectations, in different age groups, not to mention in different cultures. Genetic differences, such as in a person’s taster status, can also modulate the psychological impact of food colour on flavour perception. By gaining a better understanding of the sensory and hedonic expectations elicited by food colour in different groups of individuals, researchers are coming to understand more about why it is that what we see modulates the multisensory perception of flavour, as well as our appetitive and avoidance-related food behaviours.
250 citations
Cites background from "Eating with our ears: assessing the..."
...The smell and aroma of food and drink are clearly important here, as are, on occasion, the sounds of food preparation (see [22], for a review)....
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01 Nov 2017-International Journal of Human-computer Studies \/ International Journal of Man-machine Studies
TL;DR: This review, with the focus squarely on the domain of Human-Computer Interaction (HCI), summarizes the state-of-the-art in the area and suggests that mixed reality solutions are currently the most plausible as far as delivering flavour experiences digitally is concerned.
Abstract: Review paper assesses the possibilities and pitfalls around the digitization of the chemical senses.Possibilities include delivery of ambient fragrance, digital flavour experiences.We highlight how the majority of the attempts at successful commercialization have failed, often in the face of consumer ambivalence over the perceived benefits/utility.Ultimately, we suggest that mixed reality solutions are currently the most plausible as far as delivering (or rather modulating) flavour experiences digitally is concerned.The identify key problems with digital fragrance delivery related to attention and attribution (i.e., being aware of stimulation and believing that it is doing the work). Many people are understandably excited by the suggestion that the chemical senses can be digitized; be it to deliver ambient fragrances (e.g., in virtual reality or health-related applications), or else to transmit flavour experiences via the internet. However, to date, progress in this area has been surprisingly slow. Furthermore, the majority of the attempts at successful commercialization have failed, often in the face of consumer ambivalence over the perceived benefits/utility. In this review, with the focus squarely on the domain of Human-Computer Interaction (HCI), we summarize the state-of-the-art in the area. We highlight the key possibilities and pitfalls as far as stimulating the so-called lower senses of taste, smell, and the trigeminal system are concerned. Ultimately, we suggest that mixed reality solutions are currently the most plausible as far as delivering (or rather modulating) flavour experiences digitally is concerned. The key problems with digital fragrance delivery are related to attention and attribution. People often fail to detect fragrances when they are concentrating on something else; And even when they detect that their chemical senses have been stimulated, there is always a danger that they attribute their experience (e.g., pleasure) to one of the other senses this is what we call the fundamental attribution error. We conclude with an outlook on digitizing the chemical senses and summarize a set of open-ended questions that the HCI community has to address in future explorations of smell and taste as interaction modalities
97 citations
TL;DR: The latest evidence concerning the various ways in which what the authors hear can influence what they taste leads to the growing realization that the crossmodal influences of music and noise on food perception and consumer behaviour may have some important if, as yet, unrecognized implications for public health.
Abstract: Food product-extrinsic sounds (i.e., those auditory stimuli that are not linked directly to a food or beverage product, or its packaging) have been shown to exert a significant influence over various aspects of food perception and consumer behaviour, often operating outside of conscious awareness. In this review, we summarise the latest evidence concerning the various ways in which what we hear can influence what we taste. According to one line of empirical research, background noise interferes with tasting, due to attentional distraction. A separate body of marketing-relevant research demonstrates that music can be used to bias consumers' food perception, judgments, and purchasing/consumption behaviour in various ways. Some of these effects appear to be driven by the arousal elicited by loud music as well as the entrainment of people's behaviour to the musical beat. However, semantic priming effects linked to the type and style of music are also relevant. Another route by which music influences food perception comes from the observation that our liking/preference for the music that we happen to be listening to carries over to influence our hedonic judgments of what we are tasting. A final route by which hearing influences tasting relates to the emerging field of 'sonic seasoning'. A developing body of research now demonstrates that people often rate tasting experiences differently when listening to soundtracks that have been designed to be (or are chosen because they are) congruent with specific flavour experiences (e.g., when compared to when listening to other soundtracks, or else when tasting in silence). Taken together, such results lead to the growing realization that the crossmodal influences of music and noise on food perception and consumer behaviour may have some important if, as yet, unrecognized implications for public health.
91 citations
TL;DR: A new framework of multisensory flavour integration is proposed focusing not on the food-intrinsic/extrinsics divide, but rather on whether the sensory information is perceived to originate from within or outside the body.
Abstract: When it comes to eating and drinking, multiple factors from diverse sensory modalities have been shown to influence multisensory flavour perception and liking. These factors have heretofore been strictly divided into either those that are intrinsic to the food itself (e.g., food colour, aroma, texture), or those that are extrinsic to it (e.g., related to the packaging, receptacle or external environment). Given the obvious public health need for sugar reduction, the present review aims to compare the relative influences of product-intrinsic and product-extrinsic factors on the perception of sweetness. Evidence of intrinsic and extrinsic sensory influences on sweetness are reviewed. Thereafter, we take a cognitive neuroscience perspective and evaluate how differences may occur in the way that food-intrinsic and extrinsic information become integrated with sweetness perception. Based on recent neuroscientific evidence, we propose a new framework of multisensory flavour integration focusing not on the food-intrinsic/extrinsic divide, but rather on whether the sensory information is perceived to originate from within or outside the body. This framework leads to a discussion on the combinability of intrinsic and extrinsic influences, where we refer to some existing examples and address potential theoretical limitations. To conclude, we provide recommendations to those in the food industry and propose directions for future research relating to the need for long-term studies and understanding of individual differences.
75 citations
Cites background from "Eating with our ears: assessing the..."
..., the sounds that we hear when eating) can contribute to our perception of crispness, freshness and pleasantness for foods such as crisps, biscuits and fruit [70–73] (see Reference [74] for a review)....
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References
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TL;DR: The present data support the hypothesis that carbonated water excites lingual nociceptors via a carbonic anhydrase-dependent process, in turn exciting neurons in Vc that are presumably involved in signaling oral irritant sensations.
Abstract: Carbonated drinks elicit a sensation that is highly sought after, yet the underlying neural mechanisms are ill-defined. We hypothesize that CO2 is converted via carbonic anhydrase into carbonic acid, which excites lingual nociceptors that project to the trigeminal nuclei. We investigated this hypothesis using three methodological approaches. Electrophysiological methods were used to record responses of single units located in superficial laminae of the dorsomedial aspect of trigeminal subnucleus caudalis (Vc) evoked by lingual application of carbonated water in anesthetized rats. After pretreatment of the tongue with the carbonic anhydrase inhibitor dorzolamide, neuronal responses to carbonated water were significantly attenuated, followed by recovery. Using c-Fos immunohistochemistry, we investigated the distribution of brainstem neurons activated by intraoral carbonated water. Fos-like immunoreactivity (FLI) was significantly higher in the superficial laminae of dorsomedial and ventrolateral Vc in animals treated with carbonated water versus controls. Dorzolamide pretreatment significantly reduced FLI in dorsomedial Vc. We also examined the sensation elicited by carbonated water in human psychophysical studies. When one side of the tongue was pretreated with dorzolamide, followed by bilateral application of carbonated water, a significant majority of subjects chose the untreated side as having a stronger sensation and assigned significantly higher intensity ratings to that side. Dorzolamide did not reduce irritation elicited by pentanoic acid. The present data support the hypothesis that carbonated water excites lingual nociceptors via a carbonic anhydrase-dependent process, in turn exciting neurons in Vc that are presumably involved in signaling oral irritant sensations.
78 citations
"Eating with our ears: assessing the..." refers background in this paper
...It would appear that the sour-sensing cells that act as the taste sensors for carbonation [85] and/or the associated oral-somatosensory cues [86] likely dominate the overall experience as soon as we take a beverage into our mouths, which, after all, is what we all want to do when we drink....
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TL;DR: For instance, this article found that crispness appeared to be very closely related to loudness and less related to firmness, while loudness of the chewing sounds was more closely linked to crispness than the firmness.
Abstract: Twenty subjects judged the crispness, loudness, and firmness of sixteen food samples by both biting and chewing and by only biting the foods. These subjects also scored the foods for thirteen textural qualities. Instrumental measures of slope, peak force, and deformation to fracture were obtained for the sixteen foods from a snap test at four deformation rates. Whether a subject judged an attribute by the bite or the bite and chew technique made little or no difference in the sensory judgments. Crispness appeared to be very closely related to loudness and less closely related to firmness. Loudness of the chewing sounds was more closely related to crispness than to firmness. Of the sensory qualities studied, loud, snap, and crackly were the three most closely related to crispness. Of the instrumental parameters Young's Modulus generally had the highest correlation with the crispness of all foods and peak force generally had the highest correlation with firmness. Deformation rate had minimal effects on measures of flexure or peak force, but its effects on Young's Modulus were frequently large and irregular. A vibrotactile-acoustical hypothesis for crispness is proposed.
77 citations
TL;DR: In this article, a variety of tape recorded bite sounds and chew sounds for both crispness and crunchiness were evaluated by twenty participants. But the results for a specific food differed from the general conclusions.
Abstract: Twenty subjects judged a variety of tape recorded bite sounds and chew sounds for both crispness and crunchiness. Crispness scores were generally higher for the bite sounds than for the chew sounds. Crunchiness judgments showed no overall difference between bites and chews. However, the interaction between the eating technique and the individual food sounds was highly significant for both crispness and crunchiness judgments, and in several cases the result for a specific food differed from the general conclusions.
From the results of the first test, two subsets of the sounds were selected based on significant t-tests: one set in which the sounds were either more crisp than crunchy or more crunchy than crisp, and a second set in which the bite and chew sounds for the same product differed in crispness. These subsets were tested twice by a second group of twenty subjects to determine whether the differences might be related to loudness or pitch. The crisper sounds were typically both higher in pitch and louder than the crunchier sounds although exceptions occurred. In the majority of bite versus chew pairs, the crisper sounds were also louder- and/or higher-pitched than the less crisp sounds.
77 citations
"Eating with our ears: assessing the..." refers background in this paper
...The pitch of eating sounds changes (specifically it is lowered) by changing from biting to chewing, and, as a result, judgments of crispness tend to be lower ([55,58];...
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...Basically, she found that those foods that are associated with higher-pitched biting sounds are more likely to be described as ‘crispy’ than as ‘crunchy’ ([55,57,58]; see also [59,60])....
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TL;DR: In this article, a sensory vocabulary comprising appearance, odour, taste, texture and sound is developed and the panel is trained to use these attributes for dry crusted, crispy, and crunchy food products.
75 citations
"Eating with our ears: assessing the..." refers background in this paper
...Basically, she found that those foods that are associated with higher-pitched biting sounds are more likely to be described as ‘crispy’ than as ‘crunchy’ ([55,57,58]; see also [59,60])....
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Book•
01 Jan 1985
TL;DR: Food, Drugs and Immune System Interactions Nutritional Assessment and Recommended Dietary Allowances An Overview of Molecular Genetics Genetic Improvement of Agricultural Resources APPENDIX.
Abstract: PART 1: FOOD CONSTITUENTS, FOOD SOURCES AND ENERGETICS: Water in Foods: Physical and Chemical Phenomena Proteins: Chemistry, Structure and Analysis Proteins: Sources and Nutritional Evaluation Enzymes: Kinetics, Properties and Applications Vitamins and Vitamin-like Substances Carbohydrates: Chemistry, Occurrence and Food Applications Lipids: Chemistry, Structure and Occurrence Food Colloids Pigments and Natural Colorants Food Flavors and Flavor Perception Nutritional Energetics Photosynthesis, Plants and Primary Productivity Food Fermentations PART II: INTEGRATED METABOLISM AND EFFECTS OF DIETARY CONSTITUENTS: Digestion, Absorption and Melabsorption of Food Nutrients Hormonal Control of Metabolism and Nutrition Carbohydrate Metabolism Lipid Metabolism Metabolism of Nitrogenous Biomolecules Marco- and Trace Elements in Nutrition Toxicants and Undesirable Food Constituents Food, Drugs and Immune System Interactions Nutritional Assessment and Recommended Dietary Allowances PART III: INFORMATIONAL BIOMOLECULES AND APPLIED GENETICS: An Overview of Molecular Genetics Genetic Improvement of Agricultural Resources APPENDIX.
74 citations
"Eating with our ears: assessing the..." refers background in this paper
...While some researchers would prefer that the term be restricted to gustation, retronasal olfaction, and possibly also trigeminal inputs (see, for example, [15,16]), others have suggested that the senses of hearing and vision should also be incorporated [4,5,18-20]....
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