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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01 Jan 1982
TL;DR: This paper examined Roman architecture as a party of overall urban design and looked at arches, public buildings, tombs, columns, stairs, plazas, and streets, and found that Roman architecture was a party party of urban design.
Abstract: Examines Roman architecture as a party of overall urban design and looks at arches, public buildings, tombs, columns, stairs, plazas, and streets.
48 citations
TL;DR: Frequency spectrographic analysis revealed that, although the sounds were louder in subjects with natural dentition, crisp and soggy textures could be equally well differentiated by their noise levels in both groups.
Abstract: Bone conducted chewing sounds picked up by a specially designed device were recorded from three different facial bony locations in two age and sex matched groups of subjects with natural and artificial dentitions. Frequency spectrographic analysis revealed that, although the sounds were louder in subjects with natural dentition, crisp and soggy textures could be equally well differentiated by their noise levels in both groups. The use of a denture adhesive restored the chewing noise of denture wearers to that observed in the natural dentition group. There was a marked degree of mechanical impedance in the transmission of sound from the site of masticatory impact to distant cranial points. Breakdown of particle size during chewing was accompanied by declines in noise levels.
46 citations
"Eating with our ears: assessing the..." refers background in this paper
...have a maximum resonance at around 160 Hz [33,123]....
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TL;DR: In this paper, the authors evaluated the brittleness and crispness of low moisture foods and selected high moisture foods using the Instron fracture tests and using a sensory panel, and found that crispness was correlated with the initial linear portion of the force-deformation curves when the sample were supported near their ends and also in their middle regions.
Abstract: The brittleness and crispness of low moisture foods and the crispness of selected high moisture foods were evaluated both instrumentally by Instron fracture tests and using a sensory panel Brittleness was evaluated sensorially during the “first bite” whereas crispness was identified at a later stage of mastication The maximum force at fracture of low moisture foods correlated inversely with panelists’ evaluations of brittleness either in the mouth or using the fingers Panelists' evaluations of crispness in the mouth correlated reasonably well with the initial linear portion of the Instron force-deformation curves when the sample were supported near their ends and also in their middle regions The shapes of the force-deformation curves for high moisture foods were very much influenced by the way in which samples were supported in fracture tests, the method of fracture and the Instron cross-head speed
45 citations
TL;DR: The authors investigate whether the expectation that a drink tastes consistent across mouthfuls influences reported taste and conclude that flavor perception is best considered in terms of windows of flavor variation within which sensation changes to be more in line with expectations derived from past and current consumption experiences.
Abstract: Here, we investigate whether the expectation that a drink tastes consistent across mouthfuls influences reported taste. A paradigm was developed to prompt the expectation that drink stimuli tasted identical to each other. Participants sipped two drinks and indicated whether they tasted the same. In some trials, the drinks appeared to be poured from the same jug, prompting the homogeneous taste expectation. These ‘same-jug’ drink pairs were reported more similar than ‘different-jug’ drink pairs, where the drinks were seen to be poured from different jugs, even when sweetness differed. This effect did not occur when the difference in sweetness between the drinks was too great. This suggests that expectancy effects act to smooth out variation in taste within a window of taste differences, until differences become perceptually noticeable. The expectation effect also dwindled over the course of the experiment, suggesting that expectations of similarity were updated with increasing experience of incongruous same-jug drinks. We conclude that flavor perception is best considered in terms of windows of flavor variation within which sensation changes to be more in line with expectations derived from past and current consumption experiences.
44 citations
"Eating with our ears: assessing the..." refers background in this paper
...That said, remember here that our first experience of a food very often plays by far the most important role in our experience of, and subsequent memory for, that which we have consumed [102]....
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TL;DR: The authors found that the pleasantness of a sound showed the largest positive correlation with the descriptors crisp and crunchy, and that pleasantness did not appear to be useful in interpreting either the one- or two-dimensional multidimensional scaling representations of the 16 food sounds.
Abstract: Fifty-two subjects judged the pleasantness of the sounds produced when they ate 16 different food samples or of tape recorded sounds produced by biting and chewing the same food samples. The tape recorded sounds were also scored for nine other acoustical descriptors. Pleasantness scores of the sounds of foods when eaten were closely related to the scores of the recorded sound with the exception of two outliers. The pleasantness of a sound showed the largest positive correlation with the descriptors crisp and crunchy. Pleasantness did not appear to be useful in interpreting either the one- or two-dimensional multidimensional scaling representations of the 16 food sounds.
40 citations
"Eating with our ears: assessing the..." refers background in this paper
...Indeed, it turns out that crispness and pleasantness are highly correlated when it comes to our rating of foods [2]....
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...sounds have a particularly noticeable influence on people’s perception of crispness [2,6]....
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