Odors modulate color appearance
Our brain constantly combines multisensory information from our surrounding environment. Odors for instance are often perceived with visual cues; these sensations interact to form our own subjective experience. This integration process can have a profound impact on the resulting experience and can a...
| Main Authors: | , , , |
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
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Frontiers Media S.A.
2023-10-01
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| Series: | Frontiers in Psychology |
| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1175703/full |
| _version_ | 1797665351145619456 |
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| author | Ryan J. Ward Ryan J. Ward Maliha Ashraf Sophie Wuerger Alan Marshall |
| author_facet | Ryan J. Ward Ryan J. Ward Maliha Ashraf Sophie Wuerger Alan Marshall |
| author_sort | Ryan J. Ward |
| collection | DOAJ |
| description | Our brain constantly combines multisensory information from our surrounding environment. Odors for instance are often perceived with visual cues; these sensations interact to form our own subjective experience. This integration process can have a profound impact on the resulting experience and can alter our subjective reality. Crossmodal correspondences are the consistent associations between stimulus features in different sensory modalities. These correspondences are presumed to be bidirectional in nature and have been shown to influence our perception in a variety of different sensory modalities. Vision is dominant in our multisensory perception and can influence how we perceive information in our other senses, including olfaction. We explored the effect that different odors have on human color perception by presenting olfactory stimuli while asking observers to adjust a color patch to be devoid of hue (neutral gray task). We found a shift in the perceived neutral gray point to be biased toward warmer colors. Four out of five of our odors also trend toward their expected crossmodal correspondences. For instance, when asking observers to perform the neutral gray task while presenting the smell of cherry, the perceptually achromatic stimulus was biased toward a red-brown. Using an achromatic adjustment task, we were able to demonstrate a small but systematic effect of the presence of odors on human color perception. |
| first_indexed | 2024-03-11T19:43:33Z |
| format | Article |
| id | doaj.art-864cd966bc9943d1b4cba93f1179353d |
| institution | Directory Open Access Journal |
| issn | 1664-1078 |
| language | English |
| last_indexed | 2024-03-11T19:43:33Z |
| publishDate | 2023-10-01 |
| publisher | Frontiers Media S.A. |
| record_format | Article |
| series | Frontiers in Psychology |
| spelling | doaj.art-864cd966bc9943d1b4cba93f1179353d2023-10-06T06:44:43ZengFrontiers Media S.A.Frontiers in Psychology1664-10782023-10-011410.3389/fpsyg.2023.11757031175703Odors modulate color appearanceRyan J. Ward0Ryan J. Ward1Maliha Ashraf2Sophie Wuerger3Alan Marshall4Department of Computer Science and Mathematics, Liverpool John Moores University, Liverpool, United KingdomDepartment of Electrical Engineering and Electronics, University of Liverpool, Liverpool, United KingdomDepartment of Psychology, University of Liverpool, Liverpool, United KingdomDepartment of Computer Science and Technology, Cambridge University, Cambridge, United KingdomDepartment of Electrical Engineering and Electronics, University of Liverpool, Liverpool, United KingdomOur brain constantly combines multisensory information from our surrounding environment. Odors for instance are often perceived with visual cues; these sensations interact to form our own subjective experience. This integration process can have a profound impact on the resulting experience and can alter our subjective reality. Crossmodal correspondences are the consistent associations between stimulus features in different sensory modalities. These correspondences are presumed to be bidirectional in nature and have been shown to influence our perception in a variety of different sensory modalities. Vision is dominant in our multisensory perception and can influence how we perceive information in our other senses, including olfaction. We explored the effect that different odors have on human color perception by presenting olfactory stimuli while asking observers to adjust a color patch to be devoid of hue (neutral gray task). We found a shift in the perceived neutral gray point to be biased toward warmer colors. Four out of five of our odors also trend toward their expected crossmodal correspondences. For instance, when asking observers to perform the neutral gray task while presenting the smell of cherry, the perceptually achromatic stimulus was biased toward a red-brown. Using an achromatic adjustment task, we were able to demonstrate a small but systematic effect of the presence of odors on human color perception.https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1175703/fullcrossmodal correspondencescrossmodal associationsodorsolfactioncolorsneutral gray |
| spellingShingle | Ryan J. Ward Ryan J. Ward Maliha Ashraf Sophie Wuerger Alan Marshall Odors modulate color appearance Frontiers in Psychology crossmodal correspondences crossmodal associations odors olfaction colors neutral gray |
| title | Odors modulate color appearance |
| title_full | Odors modulate color appearance |
| title_fullStr | Odors modulate color appearance |
| title_full_unstemmed | Odors modulate color appearance |
| title_short | Odors modulate color appearance |
| title_sort | odors modulate color appearance |
| topic | crossmodal correspondences crossmodal associations odors olfaction colors neutral gray |
| url | https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1175703/full |
| work_keys_str_mv | AT ryanjward odorsmodulatecolorappearance AT ryanjward odorsmodulatecolorappearance AT malihaashraf odorsmodulatecolorappearance AT sophiewuerger odorsmodulatecolorappearance AT alanmarshall odorsmodulatecolorappearance |