Analysing the Impact of Music on the Perception of Red Wine via Temporal Dominance of Sensations

2020

Foods

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This review summarizes the various outcomes that may occur when two or more elements are paired in the context of flavour perception. In the first part, I review the literature concerning what happens when flavours, ingredients, and/or culinary techniques are deliberately combined in a dish, drink, or food product. Sometimes the result is fusion but, if one is not careful, the result can equally well be confusion instead. In fact, blending, mixing, fusion, and flavour pairing all provide relevant examples of how the elements in a carefully-crafted multi-element tasting experience may be combined. While the aim is sometimes to obscure the relative contributions of the various elements to the mix (as in the case of blending), at other times, consumers/tasters are explicitly encouraged to contemplate/perceive the nature of the relationship between the contributing elements instead (e.g., as in the case of flavour pairing). There has been a noticeable surge in both popular and commercial interest in fusion foods and flavour pairing in recent years, and various of the ‘rules’ that have been put forward to help explain the successful combination of the elements in such food and/or beverage experiences are discussed. In the second part of the review, I examine the pairing of flavour stimuli with music/soundscapes, in the emerging field of ‘sonic seasoning’. I suggest that the various perceptual pairing principles/outcomes identified when flavours are paired deliberately can also be meaningfully extended to provide a coherent framework when it comes to categorizing the ways in which what we hear can influence our flavour experiences, both in terms of the sensory-discriminative and hedonic response.

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Multisensory Flavour Perception: Blending, Mixing, Fusion, and Pairing within and between the Senses

2020

Foods

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“…14 Wine makers and wine brands, both large and small, are increasingly coming to recognize the benefits of cognitive research to help enhance their cellar door and tasting room experiences for discerning customers (see Wang, Frank, et al, 2019). As should have become apparent, crossmodal correspondences between wine and shapes, colours (Heatherly et al, 2019), musical stimuli (e.g., Burzynska et al, 2019;Wang, Mesz, et al, 2019), and even tactile stimuli (see 15 are potentially relevant when trying to communicate with the consumer, be it in the store or while tasting in the home or elsewhere.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Tasting a quality wine will likely reveal a temporally evolving range of flavours and oral-somatosensory attributes to the palate of the attentive wine taster (as revealed using sensory analysis techniques such as the temporal dominance of sensations (TDS, e.g., Meillon, Urbano, & Schlich, 2009;Wang, Mesz, et al, 2019). As such, selecting music to match just one attribute of the wine-tasting experience can sometimes be less than ideal.…”

Section: Extraordinary Wine-tasting Experiencesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Recently, researchers have started to compose music specifically to match the likely temporal evolution of the tasting experience. In order to do this, sensory science techniques, such as TDS, that allow one to track the ebb and flow of different notes, or elements, in the tasting experience over time have proved to be very helpful (Wang, Mesz, et al, 2019).…”

Section: Extraordinary Wine-tasting Experiencesmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Wine psychology: basic & applied

2020

Cogn. Research

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Basic cognitive research can help to explain our response to wine, and the myriad factors that affect it. Wine is a complex, culture-laden, multisensory stimulus, and our perception/experience of its properties is influenced by everything from the packaging in which it is presented through the glassware in which it is served and evaluated. A growing body of experiential wine research now demonstrates that a number of contextual factors, including everything from the colour of the ambient lighting through to background music can exert a profound, and in some cases predictable, influence over the tasting experience. Sonic seasoning-that is, the matching of music or soundscapes with specific wines in order to accentuate or draw attention to certain qualities/attributes in the wine, such as sweetness, length, or body, also represents a rapidly growing area of empirical study. While such multisensory, experiential wine research undoubtedly has a number of practical applications, it also provides insights concerning multisensory perception that are relevant to basic scientists. Furthermore, the findings of the wine research are also often relevant to those marketers interested in understanding how the consumers' perception of any other food or beverage product can potentially be modified.

“…Note also that people do not adapt to the presence of bad odours in the way they have been shown to adapt to neutral/positive odours (such as the smell of one's own home). , and/or Check-All-That-Apply (CATA; e.g., Meyners, Castura, & Carr, 2013;Oliver, Cicerale, Pang, & Keast, 2018) in order to help reveal the complex multisensory evolution of sensations that may occur in something as simple as a single mouthful or icecream (e.g., Lin, Hamid, Shepherd, Kantono, & Spence, 2019;Xu, Hamid, Shepherd, Kantono, & Spence, in press) or else in a single prolonged mouthful of wine (e.g., see Burzynska, Wang, Spence, & Bastian, 2019;Wang, Mesz, Riera, Trevisan, Sigman, Guha, & Spence, 2019).…”

Section: Sonic Seasoning: Exogenously Drawing Attention Crossmodally mentioning

confidence: 99%

Attending to the Chemical Senses

2019

Multisens. Res.

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Theorizing around the topic of attention and its role in human information processing largely emerged out of research on the so-called spatial senses: vision, audition, and to a lesser extent, touch. Thus far, the chemical senses have received far less research interest (or should that be attention) from those experimental psychologists and cognitive neuroscientists interested in the topic. Nevertheless, this review highlights the key role that attentional selection also plays in chemosensory information processing and awareness. Indeed, many of the same theoretical approaches/experimental paradigms that were originally developed in the context of the spatial senses, can be (and in some cases already have been) extended to provide a useful framework for thinking about the perception of taste/flavour. Furthermore, a number of those creative individuals interested in modifying the perception of taste/flavour by manipulating product-extrinsic cues (such as, for example, music in the case of sonic seasoning) are increasingly looking to attentional accounts in order to help explain the empirical phenomena that they are starting to uncover. However, separate from its role in explaining sonic seasoning, gaining a better understanding of the role of attentional distraction in modulating our eating/drinking behaviours really ought to be a topic of growing societal concern. This is because distracted diners (e.g., those who eat while watching TV, fiddling with a mobile device or smartphone, or even while driving) consume significantly more than those who mindfully pay attention to the sensations associated with eating and drinking.