Authors:
Nicole Ashley V. Santos
and
Maria Teresa R. Pulido
Affiliation:
Department of Physics, Mapúa University, Intramuros, Manila City, 1002 and Philippines
Keyword(s):
Psychophysics, Synesthesia, Surveys, Data Analysis.
Related
Ontology
Subjects/Areas/Topics:
Case Studies
;
Health Engineering and Technology Applications
;
Neural Rehabilitation
;
Neurotechnology, Electronics and Informatics
;
Simulation and Modeling
;
Simulation Tools and Platforms
Abstract:
Synesthesia is a perceptual phenomenon involving the stimulation of multiple senses. In this work, we determine the presence of sound-gustatory synesthesia by looking at the possible effects of background music on the perceived taste of a coffee-sugar mixture. We asked participants (N = 83) to listen to music while identifying the tastes they perceived drinking a coffee-sugar sample. Our results showed that sweetness was perceived more while listening to the “Slow” music, which is consistent with previous work. The perception of sourness also increased with the tempo of the music, consistent with work associating sourness with pitch. Interestingly, participants also perceived saltiness and sourness even though the ingredients did not contain ingredients with those tastes, which provides further evidence of sound influencing taste perception. This study has shown the presence of sound-gustatory synesthesia in a typical coffeehouse setting, introducing potential applications in psychop
hysics, food science, and other complex systems research. Our algorithm has also shown how quantitative tools can be used in a qualitative field such as psychological perception. We expect multisensory, interconnected technology in the Internet of Things to spread the experience of synesthesia within a population, with Big Data enabling researchers to detect and measure synesthesia much more accurately.
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