Verbally Induced Olfactory Illusions Are Not Caused by Visual Processing: Evidence From Early and Late Blindness

Olfactory perception is malleable and easily modulated by top-down processes such as those induced by visual and verbal information. A classic example of this is olfactory illusions where the perceived pleasantness of an odor is manipulated by the valence of a verbal label that is either visually or auditorily presented together with the odor. The mechanism behind this illusion is still unknown, and it is not clear if it is driven only by verbal information or if there is an interaction between language functions and visual mental imagery processes. One way to test this directly is to study early blind individuals who have little or no experience of visual information or visual mental imagery. Here, we did this by testing early blind, late blind, and sighted individuals in a classical paradigm where odors were presented with negative, neutral, and positive labels via speech. In contrast to our hypothesis—that the lack of visual imagery would render early blind individuals less susceptible to the olfactory illusion—early and late blind participants showed more amplified illusions than sighted. These findings demonstrate that the general mechanism underlying verbally induced olfactory illusions is not caused by visual processing and visual mental imagery per se.

Deep Listening to the Amazon Rainforest through Sonic Architectures

De Rerum Natura is an electroacoustic composition by the author, based on field recordings from the Brazilian Amazon rainforest. The piece is part of wider research from the author that explores the act of listening, associated visual mental imagery and dynamic subjective links between the composer's experience of listening to/recording experience of the original material and the audience's perception of the final composition as it is performed. This article focuses on the author's process of developing De Rerum Natura, based on Deep Listening. De Rerum Natura also examines the merging of the composition with the acoustics of the performance space.

Brand-Evoked Mental Imagery: The Role of Brands in Eliciting Mental Imagery

This research provides evidence of the role played by a brand in the stimulation of mental imagery. We anticipate that a familiar (vs. unfamiliar) brand will evoke higher levels of visual mental imagery in the consumer. In addition, if the consumer exhibits favorability toward the brand, the visual mental imagery evoked will be enhanced. Therefore, we provide evidence of the moderating role of brand favorability in the relationship between brand familiarity and visual mental imagery. Our findings suggest that brands are evocative and are able to enhance (or reduce) information processing and, thus, the generation of visual mental images that we name “brand-evoked mental imagery.” The results contribute to the literature on branding and mental imagery and have several practical implications for marketers.

Auditory and Visual Mental Imagery in Musicians and Nonmusicians

The present research investigated auditory and visual mental imagery and how this ability differs in people with and without musical training. In a first part, the characteristics of a new auditory imagery self-report questionnaire (the Vividness of Auditory Imagery Questionnaire, VAIQ) were reported. The questionnaire was composed of 16 items assessing mental vividness of auditory everyday sounds and it was administered to 147 participants, demonstrating good psychometric properties. In a second part, self-reported vividness of auditory and visual images was assessed in people with and without music expertise. Thirty-six formally trained musicians, 33 self-taught musicians, and 33 nonmusicians completed the questionnaires. The newly built questionnaire VAIQ and the Vividness of Visual Imagery Questionnaire (VVIQ, Marks, 1973) were administered. Music aptitude and general cognitive abilities were also assessed in all participants as control measures. We observed that both groups of musicians self-reported greater vividness of mental imagery for auditory nonmusical sounds than nonmusicians, but not for visual images. The study confirmed that music expertise is linked to enhanced self-reported auditory mental imagery for everyday sounds, illustrating that such advantage is selective for auditory imagery; no difference concerning visual imagery between the groups of musicians and nonmusicians emerged.