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Sounds (high- and low-pitched) have been shown to be implicitly associated with basic tastes (sour and bitter-see Crisinel and Spence, 2009 Neuroscience Letters 464 39-42). In the present study, a version of the implicit association test was used to assess the strength of the association between high-pitched sounds and names of sweet-tasting foodstuffs, and between low-pitched sounds and names of salty-tasting foodstuffs (experiment 1). A similar task, the go/no-go association task was then used to evaluate the relative strengths of these associations (experiment 2). Analysis of the sensitivity of participants' responses suggested that both sour- and sweet-tasting (names of) food items were associated with high-pitched sounds. This result highlights the existence of robust cross-modal associations between certain sounds and basic tastes.

Original publication

DOI

10.1068/p6574

Type

Journal article

Journal

Perception

Publication Date

2010

Volume

39

Pages

417 - 425

Keywords

Acoustic Stimulation, Adult, Association, Candy, Female, Food, Humans, Male, Pitch Discrimination, Sodium Chloride, Dietary, Taste, Terminology as Topic, Young Adult