Prior exposure amplifies effects of hunger on subjective food value across the congruency spectrum.
Thu-P1-058
Presented by: Putu Agus Khorisantono
Flavour is a multisensory experience where increasing concordance between its components. For example, approximating a combination of fruity odour and a sweet taste, enhances the reported pleasantness of the percept. How these multisensory effects interact with the impact of metabolic states on reported pleasantness remains unknown, as both generalised alliesthesia and sensory-specific satiety act on the perceived pleasantness of food items. The goal of our study was to determine whether metabolic and sensory-specific effects differentially affect pleasantness ratings for multisensory flavour stimuli across the spectrum of sensory concordance. Participants completed two experimental sessions where they rated the pleasantness and object-likeness of beverages composed of taste and odor components varying in sensory concordance. Prior to each session, subjects fasted for 6 hours. In the hungry condition, they then directly performed the task, whereas in the sated condition they first consumed a meal of either chicken noodle soup or lemon meringue pie. Initial linear mixed-effect modelling showed an effect of sensory concordance on pleasantness (β = 0.133, p < .0001) but neither hunger state nor the taste of the food item eaten were reliable predictors of pleasantness. Post-hoc exploratory analyses showed that model fit was significantly improved by accounting for exposure effects imposed by the session order (β = -0.127, p = .037), which interacted with hunger state, (β = 0.097, p = .0046). Sensory-specific effects remained a poor predictor of pleasantness. Taken together, our results indicate an additive effect of alliesthesia and multisensory concordance on perceived pleasantness. Alliesthesia effects, however, are subject to interaction effects with prior exposure, where pleasantness enhancement through hunger is stronger after prior exposure under sated conditions.