Work

Demystifying wine expertise through the lens of imagination: Descriptions and imagery vividness across sensory modalities

Year: 2024

Type: article

Abstract: • No single linguistic variable predicted imagery vividness for wine. • Expert language wasn’t found to align with vivid imagery. • Experts' had more vivid wine imagery, highlighting expertise's impact. • Experts use precise language, novices prefer abstract terms. • It examines cognitive processes in wine, building on Wendy Parr's pioneering work. For most untrained novices, talking about wine or imagining the smells and flavours of wine is difficult. Wine experts, on the other hand, have been found to have better imagery for wine, and are also more proficient in describing wine. Some scholars have suggested that imagery and language are based on similar underlying processes, but no conclusive evidence has been found regarding mental imagery and language production. In this study, we examined the relationship between imagery and language use in both novices and experts. In an online experiment, wine experts and novices were asked to imagine the colour, smell, taste and mouthfeel of wines in different situations, and were asked to rate the vividness of the imagined experience as well as describe it with words. The results show that experts differ from novices on a number of linguistic measures when describing wine, including the number of words used, the type of words used, the concreteness of those words, and the adjective to noun ratio. Similarly, imagery for wine was more vivid in wine experts compared to novices in the modalities of smell, taste, and mouthfeel, in alignment with previous work. Surprisingly, we found that no single linguistic variable significantly predicted the reported vividness of wine imagery, neither in experts nor in novices. However, the linguistic model predicted imagery vividness better using data from experts compared to novices. Taken together, these findings underscore that imagery and language are different facets of wine cognition.

Source: Food Research International

DOI: 10.1016/j.foodres.2024.114159

Authors: Ilja Croijmans, Robert Pellegrino, Qian Janice Wang

Institutions: Radboud University Nijmegen, Center for Language Studies, Monell Chemical Senses Center, University of Copenhagen

Language: English

Topic: Categorization, perception, and language

Subfield: Experimental and Cognitive Psychology

Field: Psychology

Domain: Social Sciences

Open Access status: hybrid

Estimated APC paid: $4,190

Funders: Aarhus Universitet, Aarhus Universitets Forskningsfond