Mapping the Tip of the Tongue—Deprivation, Sensory Sensitisation, and Oral Haptics

Abstract

We investigated the impact of food deprivation on oral and manual haptic size perception of food and non-food objects. From relevant theories (need-proportional perception, motivated perception, frustrative nonreward, perceptual defence, and sensory sensitisation) at least four completely different competing predictions can be derived. Testing these predictions, we found across four experiments that participants estimated the length of both non-food and food objects to be larger when hungry than when satiated, which was true only for oral haptic perception, while manual haptic perception was not influenced by hunger state. Subjectively reported hunger correlated positively with estimated object size in oral, but not in manual, haptic perception. The impact of food deprivation on oral perception vanished after oral stimulations even for hungry individuals. These results favour a sensory sensitisation account maintaining that hunger itself does not alter oral perception but the accompanying lack of sensory stimulation of the oral mucosa. Both oral and manual haptic perception tended to underestimate actual object size. Finally, an enhancing effect of domain-target matching was found, ie food objects were perceived larger by oral than by manual haptics, while non-food objects were perceived larger by manual than by oral haptics.

Matching between oral inward–outward movements of object names and oral movements associated with denoted objects

“…For instance, the simulation of a consumption-related behaviour can increase or decrease the likelihood for consumption under certain conditions, just as chewing gum makes people hungry (Topolinski & Türk Pereira, 2012), while imagining eating candies can make people saturated (Morewedge, Huh, & Vosgerau, 2010). Consonantal stricture direction of words might be used as an induction of ingestion-like movements that affects later actual food consumption.…”

Tasting in 2D: implications of food shape, visual cues, and oral haptic sensory inputs

“…Thus, while prior research shows that visual inputs dominate manual haptic inputs when evaluating the size of containers/packages (Krishna 2006;Raghubir and Krishna 1999), we hold manual haptics constant (since items were picked up with a toothpick) and show that oral haptics play an influential role in size evaluations of foods with different shapes. Given that oral haptic perception is different from manual haptic perception (Topolinski and Pereira 2012) and that oral haptic perception plays a fundamental role in food judgements (Biswas et al 2014), our findings are not inconsistent with prior work. The results of study 1 also show that thin (vs. thick) foods are perceived as higher in calories, and consumers desire to consume a marginally smaller quantity of thin foods.…”

“…These findings contribute to the literature on sensory marketing and more specifically to the emerging research on oral haptics(Biswas et al 2014;Topolinski and Pereira 2012) by demonstrating that oral haptics have a fundamental influence on consumers' perceptions of different shaped foods. Our findings also contribute to the literature on the elongation bias…”

“…In contrast, in the present research, the manipulated shape is associated with the food product itself; consequently, oral haptic sensory inputs or the way the food is perceived in the mouth (Biswas et al 2014) would also be involved in size evaluations. Given that there is evidence which suggests that manual haptic perception is different from oral haptic perception (Topolinski and Pereira 2012) and that oral haptics can systematically influence consumers' perceptions of food (Biswas et al 2014), it becomes important to understand how oral haptics related to food shape/dimensionality might influence consumers' judgements and decisions. To summarize, while prior research has explored the integration of visual and manual haptic inputs in size evaluations of different shaped packages/ containers (e.g., Krishna 2006;Raghubir and Krishna 1999), the integration of visual and oral haptic inputs in size evaluations has not been studied.…”

Effects of Imagined Consumption and Simulated Eating Movements on Food Intake: Thoughts about Food Are Not Always of Advantage

“…We did not expect this result, because other studies have shown that eating-facilitating motor movements lead to increase in consumption. For example, Topolinski and Türk Pereira (2012) showed that food deprived individuals reported more hunger after they chewed a tasteless and calorie free chewing gum in comparison to those who kneaded a ball. Similarly, Topolinski and Boecker (2016) found that rehearsal of mouth movement's that resembled ingestion, signaling approach motivation (Topolinski et al, 2014) led to increased ratings of food palatability than rehearsing mouth movements associated with expectoration, signaling avoidance.…”