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: Kotler et al. as discussed by the authors proposed a method for evaluating where a brand is on the sensory scale, analyzing its sensory potential and giving it a clear pathway to optimize its sensory appeal.
Abstract: "A treasury of ideas for bringing new life to your brands, and the cases are truly compelling ...should be read by everyone involved in developing or improving a brand. Read this book and watch how the professionals do it". (Philip Kotler, Professor of International Marketing, Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University). That gratifying new car smell is actually a manufactured "new car" aroma. The sound of Kellogg's cornflakes crunching in our mouths is created in sound labs. Singapore Airlines has patented the smell in its cabins. Branding has reached a new frontier. In the future brands will have to appeal to the neglected senses: touch, taste, and smell. Branding expert Martin Lindstrom shows for the first time how it can be done. Drawing on the most extensive worldwide study ever conducted of the sensory perceptions of consumers, he shows how a two-sense product can become a five-sense phenomenon. This groundbreaking book provides innovative branding tools for evaluating where a brand is on the sensory scale, analyzing its sensory potential and giving it a clear pathway to optimize its sensory appeal. Companies like Cadillac, Apple, Mercedes-Benz, Nokia, Louis Vuitton, Nestle and Disney have all recently adopted a sensory approach, and have seen their brands sizzle under this new direction. Anyone who wants a competitive edge can't afford to neglect this book. It's guaranteed to optimize the value of any marketer's budget in the most visionary way.
320 citations
TL;DR: This article explored the impact of verbalization on the wine recognition of individuals of three categories of wine tasting expertise: non-wine drinkers, untrained wine drinkers, and trained wine experts.
288 citations
"Eating with our ears: assessing the..." refers background in this paper
...Indeed, the decades of research from experimental psychologists have shown that the kinds of responses one gets from direct questioning rarely provide particularly good insights into the true drivers of people’s behaviour, especially when one is looking at the interaction between the senses that gives rise to multisensory perception [26-28]....
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TL;DR: These experiments demonstrate the dramatic effect that auditory frequency manipulations can have on the perceived tactile roughness and moistness of surfaces, and are consistent with the proposal that different auditory perceptual dimensions may have varying salience for different surfaces.
Abstract: The sounds produced when we touch textured surfaces frequently provide information regarding the structure of those surfaces. It has recently been demonstrated that the perception of the texture of the hands can be modified simply by manipulating the frequency content of such touch-related sounds. We investigated whether similar auditory manipulations change people’s perception of the roughness of abrasive surfaces (experiment 1). Participants were required to make speeded, forced-choice discrimination responses regarding the roughness of a series of abrasive samples which they touched briefly. Analysis of discrimination errors verified that tactile roughness perception was modulated by the frequency content of the auditory feedback. Specifically, attenuating high frequencies led to a bias towards an increased perception of tactile smoothness. In experiment 2, we replicated the rubbing-hands manipulation of previous experimenters while participants rated either the perceived roughness or wetness of their hands. The wetness scale data replicated the results in the literature, while the roughness scale data replicated the result from experiment 1. A final experiment showed that delaying the auditory feedback from the hand-rubbing reduced the magnitude of this parchment-skin illusion. These experiments demonstrate the dramatic effect that auditory frequency manipulations can have on the perceived tactile roughness and moistness of surfaces, and are consistent with the proposal that different auditory perceptual dimensions may have varying salience for different surfaces.
261 citations
"Eating with our ears: assessing the..." refers background in this paper
...of a person’s hands can be changed simply by changing the sound that they hear when they rub their palms together [79-81]....
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TL;DR: This paper reviewed the existing literature on the topic of crispness and especially the different approaches, instrumental and sensory, applied to study crispness, and the role of structure, hydration and ingredients on crispness.
Abstract: Many texture studies have been published on crispness because of the great interest of consumers towards crispy foods. This work reviews the existing literature on the topic, and especially the different approaches, instrumental and sensory, applied to study crispness. These studies result in a wide range of data but, because crispness is not a clearly defined sensory attribute, the conclusions that can be drawn from these studies should be carefully examined. The physical basis for crispness are discussed and the role of structure, hydration and ingredients on crispness and its stability are presented.
245 citations
"Eating with our ears: assessing the..." refers background in this paper
...Different languages just use different terms, or else simply have no terms at all, to capture some of these textural distinctions: To give you some idea of the problems that one faces when working in this area, the French describe the texture of lettuce as craquante (crackly) or croquante (crunchy) but not as croustillant, which would be the direct translation of crispy [59,64]....
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TL;DR: It is shown that vibrotactile stimuli, applied on the palm and fingers of a congenitally deaf adult, activated his auditory cortices and recorded magnetoencephalographic signals indicated that the auditory Cortices were able to discriminate between the applied 180 Hz and 250 Hz vibration frequencies.
234 citations