A Sweet Sound? Food Names Reveal Implicit Associations between Taste and Pitch

Abstract

Sounds (high- and low-pitched) have been shown to be implicitly associated with basic tastes (sour and bitter—see Crisinel and Spence, 2009 Neuroscience Letters464 39–42). In the present study, a version of the implicit association test was used to assess the strength of the association between high-pitched sounds and names of sweet-tasting foodstuffs, and between low-pitched sounds and names of salty-tasting foodstuffs (experiment 1). A similar task, the go/no-go association task was then used to evaluate the relative strengths of these associations (experiment 2). Analysis of the sensitivity of participants' responses suggested that both sour- and sweet-tasting (names of) food items were associated with high-pitched sounds. This result highlights the existence of robust cross-modal associations between certain sounds and basic tastes.