This study explores how users perceive AI in various culinary scenarios. Using a hybrid model, we examined how perceived AI accuracy, general attitudes toward AI, and AI anxiety shape trust in AI cooking applications, and how this trust influences adoption intentions. Data from 380 UK participants revealed two groups: a small segment of Engagers, open to AI-assisted cooking, and a larger group of Avoiders. Trust was positively influenced by perceived accuracy and general attitudes, and negatively by AI anxiety. Trust, in turn, was key to distinguishing Engagers from Avoiders. However, adoption was highly context-dependent: AI was more accepted in practical tasks, such as using leftovers, but less so in socially meaningful settings such as dinner parties. Demographically, younger, educated individuals were more receptive. These findings highlight both opportunities and barriers for AI in the kitchen, offering insights into consumer trust and the nuanced dynamics of AI adoption in food contexts.

Abstract This study investigated whether synchronized, full-body pressure feedback from a wearable suit (the “bubble suit”) could enhance audience engagement during film viewing. While vibrotactile haptics have been explored in gaming and Virtual Reality (VR), pressure-based haptics remain unexplored in cinematic contexts. A within-subjects experiment was conducted with 42 participants who viewed two short film clips, one with synchronized pressure feedback delivered via an inflatable wearable suit, and one without. The custom-designed inflatable suit provided pressure across the torso, back, and limbs, controlled by an Arduino system synchronized with on-screen events. After each viewing, participants completed questionnaires measuring immersion, narrative engagement, attention, and realism. Notably, participants’ willingness to pay for the experience more than doubled. The haptic feedback also altered character empathy, shifting viewers’ emotional focus from the protagonists to side character experiencing the haptic-related event. However, the effects varied between participants, influenced by factors such as the suit’s fit and individual sensory interpretation. In conclusion, wearable pressure feedback can significantly enhance the perceived cinematic experience, offering a powerful tool for increasing audience engagement and the perceived value of entertainment. While the findings inform future designs for haptic-enhanced media, key implementation challenges remain, including technical limitations, ergonomic design, and managing individual perceptual differences.

Here, we present the outcome of the 4th workshop on Multisensory Approaches to Human-Food Interaction (MHFI), developed in collaboration with ICMI 2020 in Utrecht, The Netherlands. Capitalizing on the increasing interest on multisensory aspects of human-food interaction and the unique contribution that our community offers, we developed a space to discuss ideas ranging from mechanisms of multisensory food perception, through multisensory technologies, to new applications of systems in the context of MHFI. All in all, the workshop involved 11 contributions, which will hopefully further help shape the basis of a field of inquiry that grows as we see progress in our understanding of the senses and the development of new technologies in the context of food.

This is the introduction paper to the third version of the workshop on 'Multisensory Approaches to Human-Food Interaction' organized at the 20th ACM International Conference on Multimodal Interaction in Boulder, Colorado, on October 16th, 2018. This workshop is a space where the fast growing research on Multisensory Human-Food Interaction is presented. Here we summarize the workshop's key objectives and contributions.

Currently, technology mostly distracts us from what we are eating and drinking. As hand-held devices continues to evolve, food and drink will increasingly have to fight with our smart phones, rather than the TV, for our attention. Some chefs have already responded to the challenge by trying to ban technology at the dinner table. However, I am optimistic that, in the years to come, technology will rather become integral to our food and drink experiences: Everything from using your tablet as 21st century plateware (now that they are dishwasher safe), through to using hand-held technologies to provide a dash of sonic (digital) seasoning – that is, providing the right sonic backdrop (be it music or soundscapes) matched to bring out the best in whatever we happen to be eating or drinking. In this talk, I will highlight the ways in which technology will, and will not, change our experience of food and drink in the years to come. I will give examples from modernist chefs and molecular mixologists that are already starting to transform our mainstream experience – be it in the air or in the home environment.

We present an introduction paper to the second version of the workshop on ‘Multisensory Approaches to Human-Food Interaction’ to be held at the 19th ACM International Conference on Multimodal Interaction, which will take place on November 13th, 2017, in Glasgow, Scotland. Here, we describe the workshop’s objectives, the key contributions of the different position papers, and the relevance of their respective topic(s). Both multisensory research and new technologies are evolving fast which has opened up a number of possibilities for designing new ways of interacting with foods and drinks. This workshop highlights the rapidly growing interest in the field of Multisensory Human-Food Interaction, which can, for example, be observed in the variety of novel research and technology developments in the area.

This workshop aims to increase awareness of the different ways in which new technologies (e.g. social media, virtual reality, digital, and neuroimaging technologies) can be used as input or means to develop multisensory experiences that improve consumer satisfaction. Consumers experience products and services via their senses (i.e. sight, hearing, smell, taste, touch). The specific multisensory content of those products and services can influence people's respective attitudes, purchase intentions, and consumption. Today, consumers experiment the world through new technologies, for example, by sharing their feelings via social media, or by creating avatar in a virtual world. The challenge for marketing consists of monitoring new technologies to better understand consumer sensory experiences and to develop innovative actions that will help to improve these experiences. We will begin with the definition of sensory marketing and the role of multisensory processes in consumer experience. Second, we will address the possibility of better understanding the consumer through social media and neuroimaging technologies. To finish, we will present some technologies that are already enriching sensory experiences of consumers.

The development of neuroimaging techniques such as functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) has provided marketers with the possibility of studying changes in brain activity in relation to marketing information (packaging, pricing, promotions, etc.) and decision-making. When consumers interact with a product, the brain captures and stores the related sensory experience in a multisensory representation in memory. Such memories serve consumers when making their future decisions. Thus, the senses play an important role in consumer behavior and the results of fMRI studies provide an interesting way for sensory marketers to analyze how the brain processes sensory information affecting product perception. In this article, we show how multisensory information, as well as mental simulation, impact taste expectations and subsequently taste, or better-said, flavor, perception in the light of neuroimaging studies. First, we discuss how neural analysis can help to understand the effect of marketing information on taste perception. Second, we highlight the role of gustatory inference on food perception in light of the latest fMRI findings. Third, we suggest some directions to improve the understanding of crossmodal correspondences in the context of consumer sensory experiences.

We present rich descriptions of taste experience through an analysis of the diachronic and synchronic experiences of each of the five basic taste qualities: sweet, sour, salt, bitter, and umami. Our findings, based on a combination of user experience evaluation techniques highlight three main themes: temporality, affective reactions, and embodiment. We present the taste characteristics as a framework for design and discuss each taste in order to elucidate the design qualities of individual taste experiences. These findings add a semantic understanding of taste experiences, their temporality enhanced through descriptions of the affective reactions and embodiment that the five basic tastes elicit. These findings are discussed on the basis of established psychological and behavioral phenomena, highlighting the potential for taste-enhanced design.

This paper provides a critical review of laboratory-based studies of spatial attention. We highlight a number of ways in which such studies fail to capture the key factors/constraints that have been shown to give rise to an increased risk of vehicular accident in real-world situations. In particular, limitations that are related to the design of the attentional capture task itself and limitations that are concern the demographic and current state of the participants tested in these laboratory studies are discussed. A list of recommendations are made concerning those areas in which laboratory-based spatial attention research could focus on in the future in order to make sure that their results are more relevant to those working in an applied setting, and thus, enhance translational research.

Haptic perception constitutes an important component of our everyday interaction with many products. At the same time, several studies have, in recent years, demonstrated the importance of involving the emotions in the user-product interaction process. The present study was designed to investigate whether haptic interactions can affect, or modulate, people's responses to standardized emotional stimuli. 36 participants completed a self-assessment test concerning their emotional state utilizing as a pointer either a PHANToM device simulating a viscous force field while they moved the stylus, or else a stylus with no force field. During the presentation of the emotional pictures, various physiological parameters were recorded from participants. The results revealed a significant difference in the self-reported arousal associated with the pictures but no significant difference in the physiological measures. The behavioural findings are interpreted in terms of an effect of the haptic feedback on participants' perceived/interpreted emotional arousal. These results suggest that haptic feedback could, in the future, be used to modify participants' interpretation of their physiological states.

Behavioral studies of multisensory integration and cross-modal spatial attention have identified many potential benefits of using interfaces that engage more than just a single sense in complex operating environments. Particularly relevant in terms of application, the latest research highlights that: 1) multimodal signals can be used to reorient spatial attention effectively under conditions of high operator workload in which unimodal signals may be ineffective; 2) multimodal signals are less likely to be masked in noisy environments; and 3) there are natural links between specific signals and particular behavioral responses (e.g., head turning). However, taking advantage of these potential benefits requires that interface designers take into account the limitations of the human operator. In particular, multimodal interfaces should normally be designed so as to minimize any spatial incongruence between component warning signals presented in different sensory modalities that relate to the same event. Building on this rapidly growing cognitive neuroscience knowledge base, the last decade has witnessed the development of a number of highly effective multimodal interfaces for driving, aviation, the military, medicine, and sports.

Despite a wealth of literature on discrimination thresholds for displacement, force magnitude, stiffness, and viscosity, there is currently a lack of data on our ability to discriminate force directions. Such data are needed in designing haptic rendering algorithms where force direction, as well as force magnitude, are used to encode information such as surface topography. Given that haptic information is typically presented in addition to visual information in a data perceptualization system, it is also important to investigate the extent to which the congruency of visual information affects force-direction discrimination. In this article, the authors report an experiment on the discrimination threshold of force directions under the three display conditions of haptics alone (H), haptics plus congruent vision (HVcong), and haptics plus incongruent vision (HVincong). Average force-direction discrimination thresholds were found to be 18.4°, 25.6°, and 31.9° for the HVcong, H and HVincong conditions, respectively. The results show that the congruency of visual information significantly affected haptic discrimination of force directions, and that the force-direction discrimination thresholds did not seem to depend on the reference force direction. The implications of the results for designing haptic virtual environments, especially when the numbers of sensors and actuators in a haptic display do not match, are discussed.

One of the most important findings to emerge from the field of cognitive psychology in recent years has been the discovery that humans have a very limited ability to process incoming sensory information. In fact, contrary to many of the most influential human operator models, the latest research has shown that humans use the same limited pool of attentional resources to process the inputs arriving from each of their senses (e.g., hearing, vision, touch, smell, etc). His research calls for a radical new way of examining and understanding the senses, which has major implications for the way we design everything from household products to multimodal user interfaces. Instead, interface designers should realize that the decision to stimulate more senses actually reflects a trade-off between the benefits of utilizing additional senses and the costs associated with dividing attention between different sensory modalities. In this presentation, I will discuss some of the problems associated with dividing attention between eye and ear, as illustrated by talking on a mobile phone while driving. Charles has published more than 70 articles in scientific journals over the past decade. I hope to demonstrate that a better understanding of the senses and, especially the links between the senses that have been highlighted by recent cognitive neuroscience research, will enable interface designers to develop multimodal interfaces that more effectively stimulate the user's senses.