Psychologie

One hundred and fifty-two subjects, divided into eight groups, were exposed to a room with a low concentration of either orange or lavender and to an odorless room. In a careful double-blind procedure, neither the subjects nor the experimenters were made aware of the presence of the odors in the experimental conditions. Later they were asked to indicate how well each of 12 odor stimuli, including the experimental and control odors, befitted each of 12 visual contexts, including the exposure rooms. At the end of this session they rated the pleasantness and the familiarity of the odors, and identified them by name. Finally they were debriefed and asked specifically whether they had perceived the experimental odors anywhere in the building. The results of four subjects who answered positively to the latter question were omitted. The results confirm the earlier finding that non-identifiers implicitly link odor and exposure room, whereas identifiers do not show such a link. It is suggested that episodic information is an essential constituent of olfactory memory and that its function is comparable to that of form and structure in visual and auditory memory systems.

Sensory science and consumer science are very young compared with the other scientific disciplines from which they have borrowed well-established methods. Methods and practices commonly used in sensory science and in consumer research are critically reviewed from a psychologist's point of view and alternative solutions are suggested. Five frequent fallacies are described and illustrated: the idea that people are uniform, that they are consistent, that they make rational choices, that their perception is more important than their memory of sensory impressions and that situations are characterised by objectively measurable context variables. #

Marketing professionals and sensory scientists have several hedonic testing methods at their disposal to assess product acceptability. The central location test (CLT) which usually takes place in a standardised location under controlled conditions is more frequently used than the home use test (HUT). Given the artificial conditions of a CLT, it is assumed that a more realistic HUT yields more relevant hedonic data in spite of the uncontrolled conditions. This study compares CLT and HUT results using different types of products. Three experiments were conducted respectively with a fermented milk beverage, salted crackers and sparkling water. For each hedonic test, two samples were presented by a monadic sequential mode.

Eating, drinking and food choices are among the most frequent human behaviours. Although seemingly simple, they are complex behaviours that are determined by many factors and their interactions. The complexity of the research field stresses the necessity to attack problems in an interdisciplinary way. Unfortunately, truly interdisciplinary approaches are still rare in both sensory and consumer research. Although the number of publications has grown rapidly, there is little methodological progress and much repetition of easy mono-disciplinary research. Furthermore, and perhaps worst of all, there is very little influx from the fascinating fundamental insights about human behaviour gained over the last two decennia in physiology and psychology. Thus, findings about intuitive reasoning and the clear demonstration of the unconscious nature of most of our decision making do not seem to have touched sensory and consumer research, although they probably play a more important role in food-related behaviour than anywhere else. Instead, people still strongly adhere to theories like the theory of reasoned action and planned behaviour that are based on the idea of rational and conscious decision making and have come under severe criticism on the basis of their low predictive validity, their weak methodology and their strong theoretical bias. Past behaviour, habit and hedonic appreciation are usually better predictors of actual food choice behaviour than psychological constructs like attitudes and intentions. New insights and especially the realisation that much decision making occurs at a non-conscious level, should lead to a rethinking of the methods used in sensory and consumer research. Situational analysis, observational methods and memory and expectation research have the advantage that they leave the interactive integration of the behaviour determinants with the subject, where it belongs, instead of dissecting and reconstructing it via isolated single factor research.

The evaluation of the temporality of the sensory perception in food products is mainly assessed using the time-intensity (TI) methodology. This approach is useful for studying the temporal aspects of the perception of a given sensory attribute in a product. When TI is used for several attributes, it quickly becomes very time-consuming because one run is needed by attribute. A new method of sensory evaluation, called Temporal Dominance of Sensations (TDS), was proposed by the authors a few years ago [Pineau, N., Cordelle, S., & Schlich, P. (2003a). Temporal Dominance of Sensations: A new technique to record several sensory attributes simultaneously over time. In 5th Pangborn symposium (p. 121). July 20-24.]. It makes possible to collect temporal data during one single evaluation for up to 10 attributes on complex food products. The method consists in presenting the entire set of attributes to the panellist on the computer screen. Along the tasting of one product, the panellist has to wonder what the dominant sensory perception is and to select and score the corresponding attribute. Each time the panellist thinks the dominant sensory perception has changed, either in intensity or in quality, he/she has to score the new perception. For each run, this method enables to collect a sequence of sensory attributes (and their respective scoring) quoted at different times along the tasting. Based on one study on five dairy products, this paper explains how to describe the temporality of the sensations in a product thanks to the TDS curves. TI was also performed on the same products to compare the two methodologies. TDS and TI results exhibit close patterns of sensations but TDS is found to better enhance the sequence of the sensations over time.

This experiment investigated incidental learning and memory in children (age 7-10 years) for three different foods (fruit juice, fruit purée and biscuit), varied in sweetness. Children (N = 286) were exposed to three target foods and 24 h later their incidental learning was tested for one of the foods by asking them to recognize the target among distractors varying in sweetness. Children were also asked to rate their liking for the products.

Our senses have developed as an answer to the world we live in and so have the forms of memory that accompany them. All senses serve different purposes and do so in different ways. In vision, where orientation and object recognition are important, memory is strongly linked to identification. In olfaction, the guardian of vital functions such as breathing and food ingestion, perhaps the most important (and least noticed and researched) role of odor memory is to help us not to notice the well-known odors or flavors in our everyday surroundings, but to react immediately to the unexpected ones. At the same time it provides us with a feeling of safety when our expectancies are met. All this happens without any smelling intention or conscious knowledge of our expectations. Identification by odor naming is not involved in this and people are notoriously bad at it. Odors are usually best identified via the episodic memory of the situation in which they once occurred. Spontaneous conscious odor perception normally only occurs in situations where attention is demanded, either because the inhaled air or the food smell is particularly good or particularly bad and people search for its source or because people want to actively enjoy the healthiness and pleasantness of their surroundings or food. Odor memory is concerned with novelty detection rather than with recollection of odors. In this paper, these points are illustrated with experimental results and their consequences for doing ecologically valid odor memory research are drawn. Furthermore, suggestions for ecologically valid research on everyday odor memory and some illustrative examples are given. Citation: Köster EP, Møller P and Mojet J (2014) A "Misfit" Theory of Spontaneous Conscious Odor Perception (MITSCOP): reflections on the role and function of odor memory in everyday life. Front. Psychol. 5:64.