Expertise Shapes Multimodal Imagery for Wine

Abstract

Although taste and smell seem hard to imagine, some people nevertheless report vivid imagery in these sensory modalities. We investigate whether experts are better able to imagine smells and tastes because they have learned the ability, or whether they are better imaginers in the first place, and so become experts. To test this, we first compared a group of wine experts to yoked novices using a battery of questionnaires. We show for the first time that experts report greater vividness of wine imagery, with no difference in vividness across sensory modalities. In contrast, novices had more vivid color imagery than taste or odor imagery for wines. Experts and novices did not differ on other vividness of imagery measures, suggesting a domain-specific effect of expertise. Critically, in a second study, we followed a group of students commencing a wine course and a group of matched control participants. Students and controls did not differ before the course, but after the wine course students reported more vivid wine imagery. We provide evidence that expertise improves imagery, exemplifying the extent of plasticity of cognition underlying the chemical senses.

Cognitive Keys in Psychophysical Estimation of Chemosensory Perception in University Students

“…Our results support what was described in Croijmans et al [ 33 ] regarding the fact that a professional practical training in wine was necessary to improve the images of the students as a wine tester. This specific training affected the ability to imagine the color, smell, and taste of wine, but not of everyday objects.…”

Human Olfaction at the Intersection of Language, Culture, and Biology

“…Wine experts, too, show high consensus when describing the smell of wine [123][124][125][126], but this ability does not generalize beyond their domain of expertise: they are no better than laypeople at describing the smell of coffee or naming other everyday odors [123,125]. Similarly, wine experts have better memory [123] and imagery [127] only for odors in their domain of expertise (see also [122]).…”

Categorizing Smells: A Localist Approach

“…Wine and coffee experts’ capacity to identify and name smells, for instance, does not generalize to other, everyday odors (Croijmans & Majid, 2016). Imagery and non‐verbally mediated memory performance also remain specific to the domain of expertise (see Croijmans, Arshamian, Speed, & Majid, 2020; Croijmans & Majid, 2015, 2016; Croijmans, Speed, Arshamian, & Majid, 2020). At best, a limited transfer can occur but across close domains (e.g., food, see Morquecho‐Campos, Larsson, Boesveldt, & Olofsson, 2019).…”