Effects of Visual Priming on Taste-Odor Interaction

Little is known about the influence of visual characteristics other than colour on flavor perception, and the complex interactions between more than two sensory modalities. This study focused on the effects of recognizability of visual (texture) information on flavor perception of odorized sweet beverages

Prosodic Structure in Early Word Segmentation: ERP Evidence From Dutch Ten-Month-Olds

Item does not contain fulltextRecognizing word boundaries in continuous speech requires detailed knowledge of the native language. In the first year of life, infants acquire considerable word segmentation abilities. Infants at this early stage in word segmentation rely to a large extent on the metrical pattern of their native language, at least in stress-based languages. In Dutch and English (both languages with a preferred trochaic stress pattern), segmentation of strong-weak words develops rapidly between 7 and 10 months of age. Nevertheless, trochaic languages contain not only strong-weak words but also words with a weak-strong stress pattern. In this article, we present electrophysiological evidence of the beginnings of weak-strong word segmentation in Dutch 10-month-olds. At this age, the ability to combine different cues for efficient word segmentation does not yet seem to be completely developed. We provide evidence that Dutch infants still largely rely on strong syllables, even for the segmentation of weak-strong words

Electrophysiological evidence for prelinguistic infants' word recognition in continuous speech

Children begin to talk at about age one. The vocabulary they need to do so must be built on perceptual evidence and, indeed, infants begin to recognize spoken words long before they talk. Most of the utterances infants hear, however, are continuous, without pauses between words, so constructing a vocabulary requires them to decompose continuous speech in order to extract the individual words. Here, we present electrophysiological evidence that 10-month-old infants recognize two-syllable words they have previously heard only in isolation when these words are presented anew in continuous speech. Moreover, they only need roughly the first syllable of the word to begin doing this. Thus, prelinguistic infants command a highly efficient procedure for segmentation and recognition of spoken words in the absence of an existing vocabulary, allowing them to tackle effectively the problem of bootstrapping a lexicon out of the highly variable, continuous speech signals in their environment

Reflections on reflections of infant word recognition

The history of experimental psychology is a progression of ever more ingenious attempts to capture reflections of the processes of the mind. No mental operations can ever be observed directly. Since experimental psychology began in earnest - in Wilhelm Wundt's Leipzig laboratory in the late nineteenth century - the principal concern of experimental psychologists has been to devise methods which allow mental operations to be observed indirectly. Most commonly, these methods record the speed or accuracy of behavior for which certain mental processes are a pre-requisite; more recently, the electrophysiological signals or the blood flow in the brain can be measured as mental processing occurs. Although only such indirect reflections can ever be available to us, experimental psychology has contrived to amass substantial knowledge about the processes which go on in the human mind. Particularly challenging has been the study of the beginnings of cognitive processing. Infants in the first year of life cannot understand the overt behavioral responses required in the most common adult testing procedures; it is obviously laughable to imagine nine-month-olds signalling recognition of a word by pressing a response button or giving a verbal answer. Nonetheless, as will become clear, we do now know that nine-month-olds can indeed recognize word forms. This is because the challenge of capturing reflections of early cognition has also been met: in the past four decades, highly effective covert-behavioral methodologies have been devised for studying mental operations in the infant brain

The role of emotions in food choice and liking

Consumer liking ratings of food products often fail to predict market success. In addition to sensory tests, it is thought that food-evoked emotions provide a sensitive measure to describe products in a way that adds to information from liking. In this study two different tools were used to measure emotional responses to foods, PrEmo® and EsSense Profile® to differentiate between similar products from the same product category. Additionally, we investigated the relationship between food-evoked emotions, liking and choice behaviour. Participants (n = 123) tasted seven test products, scored liking, and evaluated each product with PrEmo® and EsSense Profile®. In a separate breakfast session we assessed the participants' actual food choice (their preferred breakfast drink out of seven). The results showed that PrEmo® and EsSense Profile® differentiated successfully between similar groups of breakfast drinks. We also found that liking is only partly associated with the emotion responses to the products. Thus, emotional profiles provide new information not captured by liking scores. Furthermore, food choice was related to mainly positive emotions, suggesting that food-evoked emotions can add to liking ratings in explaining choice behaviour

Immediate sweetening effect of Image presentation.

<p>Re-referenced sweetness ratings for odor-taste stimuli during image trials, compared to the sustained sweetening effect of an image context (see <a href="http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0023857#pone-0023857-g003" target="_blank">Figure 3</a>). The vertical axe represents the <i>additional</i> sweetening effects of Image trials compared to no-image trials within an image context. Note that ratings were not compared to baseline Odor-Taste ratings which included no exposure to Images at all. Image×Figurativeness: Compared to the no-image trials within an image context, there is an increase in sweetness rating when a Non-Figurative image is present. The trials with a figurative image, however, do not show an additional increase in sweetness ratings. We cannot exclude the possibility that this is due to a ceiling effect of the figurative context (see <a href="http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0023857#pone-0023857-g003" target="_blank">Figure 3</a>). The negative effect of Figurative Images was not significant.</p

Relative magnitudes of the sustained and transient image effects: sweetening effects of the image and no-image trials combined (sum <b>Figures 3</b> and <b>4</b>).

<p>The vertical axes displays referenced sweetness ratings. Additional sweetening effect of a non-figurative image within a non-figurative context, but no additional effect of a figurative image within a figurative context. Figurative context increases sweetness ratings almost to a maximum sweetness rating leaving no room for an additional increase in sweetness rating when a figurative image is present within the trial.</p

Neurophysiological evidence of delayed segmentation in a foreign language

Contains fulltext : 56422.pdf (publisher's version ) (Closed access)Previous studies have shown that segmentation skills are language-specific, making it difficult to segment continuous speech in an unfamiliar language into its component words. Here we present the first study capturing the delay in segmentation and recognition in the foreign listener using ERPs. We compared the ability of Dutch adults and of English adults without knowledge of Dutch (‘foreign listeners’) to segment familiarized words from continuous Dutch speech. We used the known effect of repetition on the event-related potential (ERP) as an index of recognition of words in continuous speech. Our results show that word repetitions in isolation are recognized with equivalent facility by native and foreign listeners, but word repetitions in continuous speech are not. First, words familiarized in isolation are recognized faster by native than by foreign listeners when they are repeated in continuous speech. Second, when words that have previously been heard only in a continuous-speech context re-occur in continuous speech, the repetition is detected by native listeners, but is not detected by foreign listeners. A preceding speech context facilitates word recognition for native listeners, but delays or even inhibits word recognition for foreign listeners. We propose that the apparent difference in segmentation rate between native and foreign listeners is grounded in the difference in language-specific skills available to the listeners.8 p