Cross-cultural differences in crossmodal correspondences between basic tastes and visual features.

Xiaoang Wan,Carlos Velasco,Kirsten J Mckenzie,Andy T Woods,Jasper J F Van Den Bosch,Charles Spence

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2014.01365

Abstract

We report a cross-cultural study designed to investigate crossmodal correspondences between a variety of visual features (11 colors, 15 shapes, and 2 textures) and the five basic taste terms (bitter, salty, sour, sweet, and umami). A total of 452 participants from China, India, Malaysia, and the USA viewed color patches, shapes, and textures online and had to choose the taste term that best matched the image and then rate their confidence in their choice. Across the four groups of participants, the results revealed a number of crossmodal correspondences between certain colors/shapes and bitter, sour, and sweet tastes. Crossmodal correspondences were also documented between the color white and smooth/rough textures on the one hand and the salt taste on the other. Cross-cultural differences were observed in the correspondences between certain colors, shapes, and one of the textures and the taste terms. The taste-patterns shown by the participants from the four countries tested in the present study are quite different from one another, and these differences cannot easily be attributed merely to whether a country is Eastern or Western. These findings therefore highlight the impact of cultural background on crossmodal correspondences. As such, they raise a number of interesting questions regarding the neural mechanisms underlying crossmodal correspondences.

Highlights

INTRODUCTION ‘Crossmodal correspondence’ is one of the terms that have been used to describe the tendency that people have to associate certain features, or stimuli, across the senses (Spence, 2011; Spence and Deroy, 2013)
TASTE-PATTERNS ACROSS THE FOUR GROUPS First, we visualized the associations between each stimulus and the five basic tastes in Figure 3, and performed Chi-square tests in order to see whether certain taste(s) were more often associated with one taste than the others
The results of the present study revealed a number of intriguing crossmodal associations between the basic tastes and certain visual features across the four groups of participants from different countries, including (1) the fact that a bitter taste was matched with black, the cross, ellipse, rectangle, and square shapes, (2) the salty taste was matched with the color white, and the smooth and rough textures, (3) the sour taste was matched with the color green, and (4) the sweet taste was matched with the color pink, the cloud, heart, and star shapes

Summary

Introduction

INTRODUCTION ‘Crossmodal correspondence’ is one of the terms that have been used to describe the tendency that people have to associate certain features, or stimuli, across the senses (Spence, 2011; Spence and Deroy, 2013). Spence (2011) distinguished between three different types of crossmodal correspondences, including, (1) structural correspondences which are thought to result from commonalities in the way in which different kinds of sensory information are coded neurally, (2) statistical correspondences, which pick-up on the repeated co-exposure of pairs of stimuli or correlated dimensions of experience in daily life, and (3) the linguistic correspondences that are rooted in language. Both statistical and linguistic correspondences may depend on people’s cultural background and on context, leading to possible cross-cultural differences. It would seem likely that future research would reveal both culture-specific and universally shared correspondences, but there is, undoubtedly, a need to understand and define the extent to which correspondences are shared (or not) across cultures

Methods

Results

Conclusion