title: Cross-Modal Associations between Sounds and Drink Tastes/Textures: A Study with Spontaneous Production of Sound-Symbolic Words.
abstract: Many languages have a word class whose speech sounds are linked to sensory experiences. Several recent studies have demonstrated cross-modal associations (or correspondences) between sounds and gustatory sensations by asking participants to match predefined sound-symbolic words (e.g., "maluma/takete") with the taste/texture of foods. Here, we further explore cross-modal associations using the spontaneous production of words and semantic ratings of sensations. In the experiment, after drinking liquids, participants were asked to express their taste/texture using Japanese sound-symbolic words, and at the same time, to evaluate it in terms of criteria expressed by adjectives. Because the Japanese language has a large vocabulary of sound-symbolic words, and Japanese people frequently use them to describe taste/texture, analyzing a variety of Japanese sound-symbolic words spontaneously produced to express taste/textures might enable us to explore the mechanism of taste/texture categorization. A hierarchical cluster analysis based on the relationship between linguistic sounds and taste/texture evaluations revealed the structure of sensation categories. The results indicate that an emotional evaluation like pleasant/unpleasant is the primary cluster in gustation.
authors.affiliation: Department of Informatics, The University of Electro-Communications, Tokyo, Japan and sakamoto@inf.uec.ac.jp.
authors.forename: Maki
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Sakamoto
authors.affiliation: NTT Communication Science Laboratories, Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corporation, Kanagawa, Japan.
authors.forename: Junji
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Watanabe
mesh_terms: D000161:Acoustic Stimulation; D000328:Adult; D001628:Beverages; D016000:Cluster Analysis; D004644:Emotions; D005260:Female; D005518:Food Preferences; D006801:Humans; D007802:Language; D008297:Male; D013016:Sound; D055697:Taste Perception; D055815:Young Adult
keywords: cross-modal perception; drinks; emotional evaluation; sound symbolism; spontaneously expressed sound-symbolic words