Investigation of Sound-Gustatory Synesthesia in a Coffeehouse Setting

Nicole Santos, Maria Pulido

2019

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 psychophysics, 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.

Paper Citation

in Harvard Style

Santos N. and Pulido M. (2019). Investigation of Sound-Gustatory Synesthesia in a Coffeehouse Setting.In Proceedings of the 4th International Conference on Internet of Things, Big Data and Security - Volume 1: IoTBDS, ISBN 978-989-758-369-8, pages 294-298. DOI: 10.5220/0007719502940298

in Bibtex Style

@conference{iotbds19,
author={Nicole Santos and Maria Pulido},
title={Investigation of Sound-Gustatory Synesthesia in a Coffeehouse Setting},
booktitle={Proceedings of the 4th International Conference on Internet of Things, Big Data and Security - Volume 1: IoTBDS,},
year={2019},
pages={294-298},
publisher={SciTePress},
organization={INSTICC},
doi={10.5220/0007719502940298},
isbn={978-989-758-369-8},
}

in EndNote Style

TY - CONF

JO - Proceedings of the 4th International Conference on Internet of Things, Big Data and Security - Volume 1: IoTBDS,
TI - Investigation of Sound-Gustatory Synesthesia in a Coffeehouse Setting
SN - 978-989-758-369-8
AU - Santos N.
AU - Pulido M.
PY - 2019
SP - 294
EP - 298
DO - 10.5220/0007719502940298