Physiology & Behavior 107 (2012) 502504

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Physiology & Behavior

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/phb

Brief communication

You eat with your eyes rst

Jeannine F. Delwiche
PepsiCo, Inc., Global R&D, Long Term Research, 3 Skyline Drive, Hawthorne, NY 10532, United States

H I G H L I G H T S Perception of physical stimuli depends upon interpretation of sensations. Interpretation of sensations can be inuenced by a myriad of factors. Learned associations create top-down inuences that can modify perceived avor. Visual cues modify the way taste, odor and avor are perceived. Flavor is affected depending upon the strength of the association.

a r t i c l e

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a b s t r a c t
While the senses of taste, smell, and vision are distinct, visual stimuli have been shown to alter the perception of taste, smell, and avor. Color may be the most obvious visual cue, but expectations through learned associations are set by other visual cues as well, including gloss, evenness, and shape. These expectations exert cognitive top-down inuences that can and sometimes do alter assessments of taste and avor. 2012 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Article history: Received 15 April 2012 Received in revised form 17 July 2012 Accepted 17 July 2012 Keywords: Color Appearance Flavor Top-down inuences Learned associations

A well-known adage among chefs is, You eat with your eyes rst. What this adage alludes to is the fact that foods that look unappetizing often are not eaten. Foods that are discolored, in odd shapes, or otherwise atypical are regarded with suspicion. But less obvious is the fact that visual cues can alter not just the acceptability of foods, but also modify the way taste, odor and avor are perceived [1]. To understand how sensory input from the visual system can alter avor, it is necessary to understand that the perception of physical stimuli depends upon interpretation of sensations elicited by the stimuli. Examination of ambiguous gures, such as the rabbitduck illusion [2] in Fig. 1, is one of the simplest ways to demonstrate the occurrence of interpretation. Although there is one static physical stimulus, this one item can be viewed as either a duck (looking to the left) or a rabbit (looking to the right). Whether one sees a rabbit or a duck depends upon how one interprets the sensations arising from the physical stimulus. Since sensations are interpreted, they can be inuenced by a myriad of factors. For example, the Mller-Lyer illusion [3] in Fig. 2 demonstrates how implied depth cues can inuence the perceived length of lines. The Kanizsa Triangle [4] in Fig. 3 illustrates the emergence of illusory contours, where contours are perceived without a luminance change across the

E-mail address: jeannine.delwiche@pepsico.com. 0031-9384/$ see front matter 2012 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.physbeh.2012.07.007

contour. These experienced contours in reality do not exist in the physical stimulus, highlighting how one's perception of a whole does not necessarily reect the physical reality of its parts. The perception of these contours is an example of an emergent phenomenon. Such emergent phenomena also occur cross-modally. A well known example of this is the McGurk effect [5], which results from an interaction between hearing and vision in speech perception that occurs when the auditory component of one sound is paired with the visual component of another sound, leading to the perception of a third sound. For example, pairing the auditory stimulus of the phoneme ba with the visual stimulus of the phoneme ga causes the observer to experience the phoneme da. In this instance, the perceived phoneme arises to resolve the conict between the visual and auditory stimuli. One also can view avor as an emergent phenomenon that arises from the combination of taste, odor, and chemesthesis, or a combination of multiple sensations [1]. Flavor can be viewed not only as a combination of raw materials or the component chemicals of these raw materials, but also as a combination of sensations. Multiple factors, including visual appearance, can inuence the interpretation of complex stimuli and alter the perception of taste, odor, and avor [1]. Visual stimuli often dominate the way in which stimuli are perceived [6]. The avors of miscolored and uncolored stimuli are more frequently misidentied than their appropriately colored counterparts [711]. The

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Fig. 1. The RabbitDuck illusion [2] is an example of an ambiguous gure that can be interpreted in more than one way, illustrating how physical stimuli must be interpreted during the process of perception.

Fig. 3. In the Kanizsa triangle [4], the top triangle appears to be brighter than the bottom triangle, illustrating that perception does not always accurately represent physical reality.

color of a wine can even change the terms generated to describe the wine's avor [12]. For example, when a white wine is colored red with anthocyanins (a natural red color pigment in grapes), it tends to be described with red wine odor terms associated with red or dark objects such as plum, cherry, blackberry, strawberry, and currant. But when the color is left unaltered, the wine is described with white wine odor terms associated with yellow or clear objects such as grapefruit, lemon, banana, pineapple, and hay [12]. And not only is stimulus identication and description impacted, intensity ratings are also affected [1], although the extent of the impact seems to vary depending upon the strength of a learned avorcolor association where the stronger the coloravor association, the greater the impact of color [13]. For example, Pangborn and Berg [14] added food coloring to white wine to mimic 5 wine styles, ros, sauterne, sherry, burgundy, and claret. Sweetness ratings were altered in experienced wine drinkers, but not novice wine drinkers, supporting the contention that coloravor associations must rst be learned before they will impact avor ratings. Additionally, perceived avor intensity tends to increase as with the color level [7,11,1518]. Perhaps a familiarity with beverages made from powders or concentrates, and their tendency to increase in these sensations as color increases, has created a coloravor intensity association responsible for this alteration in avor perception. Other learned color associations associated with foods are the association of ripeness and color in fruits and vegetables as well as the association between color and doneness in cooked items. These associations further set expectations, creating top-down inuences that can potentially modify perceived avor character and/or intensity [19]. Similarly, other visual cues, such as glossiness and evenness can set expectations. Depending upon the stimulus, glossiness can imply ripeness, oiliness, sliminess, or wetness, and how this visual cue is interpreted can inuence the perception of the avor. Speckling or blemishes can indicate spoilage, insect damage, and/or ripeness. Even how something is presented can inuence the assessment of color, which may in turn inuence avor perception. Consider the Adelson Checkershadow illusion [20], shown in Fig. 4. Despite their apparent difference in grayness, squares A and B are actually the same. The way the two squares are presented within the image, the context in which these squares are set, results in top-down inuences that alter the perceived intensity of the grayness level [21]. Similarly,

changing how one presents a wine by changing the shape of the glass can change the perception of the wine's avor [2225]. However, changing the shape of the wine glass only minimally alters the physical stimulus [26], and when the change in wine glass shape is masked, this difference in perception is eliminated [27]. Additionally, signicant interactions between trained judges and wine glass shape further demonstrate that the expectations of each judge resulted in the idiosyncratic changes in perceived avor arising from the change in wine glass shapes [22]. Playing with these expectations is precisely what some chefs are doing when they create items that look like a familiar food but have unexpected avors for that object. One such example is creating an item that looks like a fried egg where the yolk is carrot juice or mango puree and the egg white is coconut or panna cotta. Conversely, chefs may present a familiar avor in an unfamiliar form, such as fruit avored caviars, eggs benedict in cubes, or bacon ice cream, further playing on the avor expectations set by the visual cues. Whether these sorts of surprises delight or distract is a matter of personal preference, but they do illustrate the importance of appearance in the acceptance and rejection of foods and avors. While the investigations outlined above have repeatedly demonstrated that appearance impacts taste and avor perception, no investigations to date have examined the plasticity of this phenomenon. Two stimuli may be initially matched in perceived avor intensity, one lower in color and higher in taste and aroma versus one higher in color and lower in taste and aroma, but it is unknown if this will remain the case over time and with repeated exposure. Will the impact of the color decrease over time? Or will its impact remain the same? How does the plasticity of coloravor interactions compare to that of odortaste interactions? Is it any more or less exible? Do some colors have more

Fig. 2. In the Mller-Lyer illusion [3], the upper arrow appears to be shorter than the lower arrow despite the fact that they are the same length, illustrating that perception does not always accurately represent physical reality.

Fig. 4. In the Adelson Checkershadow illusion [20], the context established by the image and the manner in which squares A and B are presented gives rise to the perception that square A is darker than square B, despite the fact that they are actually equal in grayness.

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impact on avors than others? How generalizable is the inuence of color on avor from one food to the next? Over the decades much has been learned about the relationship of avor and appearance, but there is still more to learn about their relationship and their impact on food enjoyment and intake. References
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