Odors modulate color appearance

Ward, Ryan J, Ashraf, Maliha, Wuerger, Sophie and Marshall, Alan ORCID: 0000-0002-8058-5242 (2023) Odors modulate color appearance FRONTIERS IN PSYCHOLOGY, 14. 1175703-. ISSN 1664-1078, 1664-1078

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Abstract

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.

Item Type:	Article
Uncontrolled Keywords:	crossmodal correspondences, crossmodal associations, odors, olfaction, colors, neutral gray, color perception, olfactory perception
Divisions:	Faculty of Health & Life Sciences Faculty of Health & Life Sciences > Inst. Population Health Faculty of Science & Engineering > IDEAS
Depositing User:	Symplectic Admin
Date Deposited:	25 Oct 2023 15:34
Last Modified:	22 May 2026 18:03
DOI:	10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1175703
Open Access URL:	https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1175703
Related Websites:	Author Publisher
URI:	https://livrepository.liverpool.ac.uk/id/eprint/3176442
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