While stimulus complexity is known to affect the width of the temporal integration window (TIW), a quantitative evaluation of ecologically highly valid stimuli has not been conducted. We assumed that the degree of complexity is determined by the obviousness of the correspondence between the auditory onset and visual movement, and we evaluated the audiovisual complexity using video clips of a piano, a shakuhachi flute and human speech. In Experiment 1, a simultaneity judgment task was conducted using these three types of stimuli. The results showed that the width of TIW was wider for speech, compared with the shakuhachi and piano. Regression analysis revealed that the width of the TIW depended on the degree of complexity. In the second experiment, we investigated whether or not speech-specific factors affected the temporal integration. We used stimuli that either contained natural-speech sounds or white noise. The results revealed that the width of the TIW was wider for natural sentences, compared with white noise. Taken together, the width of the TIW might be affected by both the complexity and speech specificity.
In the present experiment, the participants tasted high-intensive bitter and lowintensive bitter beverages under one of the following four conditions: drinking green tea or coffee in either a Japanese or a Western environment. The participants evaluated the beverage and the environment. The results revealed the following interactions. (1) Given the combination of the intensive bitter coffee and the Western environment, the beverage and environment congruency facilitated the beverage evaluations for "Deliciousness" and "Wanting to drink more". (2) Women tended to evaluate beverages as more delicious and desired when the beverages matched the environment, compared with when they did not match. (3) Participants who drank coffee perceived the environment to be colder than participants who drank green tea. These results indicate that the social and cultural background of the Japanese consuming a beverage may modulate multisensory interaction in the evaluation of a beverage and the environment.Practical Applications: Our findings in this research revealed that persons involved in the design of the eating and drinking environment, that is from restaurant managers, architects, and interior designers to persons who think about the dining room at their home, may produce tastier food consumption by designing the environment in a multisensory way. For example, when designing space to serve foods and beverages that have cultural elements, creating a cultural environment that is congruent with the foods may result in a better eating experience. Since multisensory influences on the deliciousness of food can be affected by the social and cultural background of the consumer, the aforementioned people need to have a sufficient understanding of the object persons they serving the meal.
| INTRODUCTIONA bitter taste is a toxic taste for animals and they avoid tasting bitter things (Drewnowski & Gomez-Carneros, 2000). Human beings, however, are able to taste and enjoy bitter beverages and bitter foods. In order for a person to enjoy consuming a bitter food or beverage, it is necessary to have a related positive eating or drinking experience. In addition to taste and odor, there are other modalities or factors that affect an eating or drinking experience. Flavor perception and/or experience in everyday life is a multisensory phenomenon, and thus, previous studies have investigated the multisensory contribution to taste and flavor perception as well as the eating and drinking experi-
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.