Yamada Yuki, Sasaki Kyoshiro, Kunieda Satomi, Wada Yuji
Faculty of Arts and Science, Kyushu University, 744 Motooka, Nishi-ku, Fukuoka 819-0395, Japan.
Graduate School of Human-Environment Studies, Kyushu University, 6-19-1 Hakozaki, Higashi-ku, Fukuoka 812-8581, Japan.
Appetite. 2014 Oct;81:102-7. doi: 10.1016/j.appet.2014.06.006. Epub 2014 Jun 13.
When faced with a novel food, multisensory information that includes appearance and smell is a very important cue for preference, categorization, and the decision of whether or not to eat it. We elucidated whether olfactory information leads to biased visual categorization of and preference for fruits, even when odors are presented subliminally. We employed morphed images of strawberries and tomatoes combined with their corresponding odorants as stimuli. Participants were asked to categorize the images into either of two categories, to evaluate their preference for each visual image, and to judge the presence/absence of the odor. Results demonstrated that visual categorization was not affected by the odor manipulation; however, preference for uncategorizable images increased when odors were presented regardless of the participant's awareness of the odor. Our findings suggest that visual preference for novel fruits is based on both conscious and unconscious olfactory processing regarding edibility.
当面对一种新食物时，包括外观和气味在内的多感官信息对于偏好、分类以及是否食用的决策来说是非常重要的线索。我们阐明了嗅觉信息是否会导致对水果的视觉分类和偏好出现偏差，即使气味是阈下呈现的。我们使用草莓和西红柿的变形图像并结合它们相应的气味剂作为刺激物。要求参与者将图像分类为两个类别中的一个，评估他们对每个视觉图像的偏好，并判断气味是否存在。结果表明，视觉分类不受气味操纵的影响；然而，无论参与者是否意识到气味，当呈现气味时，对无法分类的图像的偏好会增加。我们的研究结果表明，对新奇水果的视觉偏好基于关于可食用性的有意识和无意识嗅觉处理。
