The influence of auditory and visual information on the perception of crispy food

The influence of auditory and/or visual information on the perception of crispy food and on the physiology of chewing was investigated. Participants chewed biscuits of three different levels of crispness under four experimental conditions: no masking, auditory masking, visual masking, and auditory plus visual masking. The order of the four masking condition blocks was randomized. The sound of chewing was masked by loud sounds on a headphone and visual masking of the food was achieved by closing the eyes. We measured skull vibration and the number of chewing cycles until swallowing. Subsequently, texture and sound attributes were scored. Auditory masking led to significant lower scores on the attributes sound and snapping, but only for the participants who started the experiments with auditory plus visual masking. The other participants were not influenced by auditory masking. The memory of the unmodified stimuli helped to maintain accurate sound perception in later trials.