Color-taste correspondence tested by the Stroop task

Abstract

People consistently associate colors with tastes (e.g., pink-sweet, yellow-sour). However, little has been known on the strength of those color-taste correspondences. The current study examined the congruency effect of color-taste correspondence using two Stroop word categorization tasks. The visual stimuli consisted of food names associated with sweet and sour tastes, presented in different shades of pink and yellow font colors. Participants were instructed to categorize the taste (sweet or sour) of the words in the Stroop word-taste categorization task and to discriminate the font color (pink or yellow) of the words in the Stroop word-color discrimination task. Results showed that participants responded faster in congruent conditions (sweet-pink and sour-yellow) than incongruent conditions (sweet-yellow and sour-pink) in both tasks. Specifically, yellow font colors facilitated the categorization of sour taste words compared to pink font colors, whereas sweet taste words facilitated the discrimination of pink font colors compared to sour taste words. These results provide further evidence for the congruency effect of color-taste correspondence in facilitating the processing of taste-related words and colors. Furthermore, the congruency effect was shown to operate bidirectionally, influencing both the conceptual meaning of tastes and perceptual color perception. This study highlights the significant interference effect of color-taste correspondence on cognitive processing as assessed by the Stroop task.

Editorial: Crossmodal correspondence

“…The latter approach is illustrated in this Research Topic by an exploratory study reported by Meng et al in which crossmodal correspondences between visual features (such as shape/angularity and color) and tastes (e.g., bitter, sweet, sour, salty) were assessed in a group of pre-schoolers. Importantly, several important factors that have been suggested to affect/constrain the crossmodal correspondences include their context-dependence (Motoki and Velasco, 2021 ), their automaticity (Spence and Deroy, 2013b ; Getz and Kubovy, 2018 ), and their bidirectionality (Motoki et al, 2023 ; Yang et al, 2023 ; Chen and Huang). These topics are addressed in several of the contributions here.…”

“…Chen and Huang showed that the sound-shape correspondences are not completely automatic, but their modulation was bidirectionally symmetrical once it occurred. The bidirectionality of crossmodal correspondences means that effects on visual perception can be elicited by stimuli from other sensory modalities, such as gustatory and/or olfactory stimuli, as highlighted by a couple of the intriguing submissions in this Research Topic (e.g., Ward et al ; Yang et al, 2023 ). Ward et al used an achromatic adjustment task to show that the presence of odors modulates color perception.…”

“…Historically, the role of crossmodal correspondences in helping to solve the crossmodal binding problem has occupied the attention of many researchers (Chen and Spence, 2017). At the same time, the paper by Yang et al (2023) demonstrates that the crossmodal correspondence between color and taste influences performance on the well-established Stroop task. However, what is striking about so many of the articles that are collected together here is how they attempt to apply our growing understanding of the crossmodal correspondences to a range of real-world applications: this includes everything from a consideration of the potential facilitatory role of designing human augmentation systems based on the crossmodal correspondences (see Pinardi et al), through to the use of crossmodal correspondences to help describe, communicate about, and market wine (Crichton-Fock, Spence, Mora, et al; Crichton-Fock, Spence, and Pettersson).…”

“…by a couple of the intriguing submissions in this Research Topic (e.g.,Ward et al;Yang et al, 2023). Ward et al used an achromatic adjustment task to show that the presence of odors modulates color perception.…”