Influence of Electric Taste, Smell, Color, and Thermal Sensory Modalities on the Liking and Mediated Emotions of Virtual Flavor Perception

Abstract

Little is known about the influence of various sensory modalities such as taste, smell, color, and thermal, towards perceiving simulated flavor sensations, let alone their influence on people's emotions and liking. Although flavor sensations are essential in our daily experiences and closely associated with our memories and emotions, the concept of flavor and the emotions caused by different sensory modalities are not thoroughly integrated into Virtual and Augmented Reality technologies. Hence, this paper presents 1) an interactive technology to simulate different flavor sensations by overlaying taste (via electrical stimulation on the tongue), smell (via micro air pumps), color (via RGB Lights), and thermal (via Peltier elements) sensations on plain water, and 2) a set of experiments to investigate a) the influence of different sensory modalities on the perception and liking of virtual flavors and b) varying emotions mediated through virtual flavor sensations. Our findings reveal that the participants perceived and liked various stimuli configurations and mostly associated them with positive emotions while highlighting important avenues for future research.