"Like Popcorn": Crossmodal Correspondences Between Scents, 3D Shapes and Emotions in Children

2019. Oussama Metatla, Emanuela Maggioni, Clare Cullen & Marianna Obrist
Proceedings of the 2019 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems.

Abstract

There is increasing interest in multisensory experiences in HCI. However, little research considers how sensory modalities interact with each other and how this may impact interactive experiences. We investigate how children associate emotions with scents and 3D shapes. 14 participants (10-17yrs) completed crossmodal association tasks to attribute emotional characteristics to variants of the "Bouba/Kiki" stimuli, presented as 3D tangible models, in conjunction with lemon and vanilla scents. Our findings support pre-existing mappings between shapes and scents, and confirm the associations between the combination of angular shapes ("Kiki") and lemon scent with arousing emotion, and of round shapes ("Bouba") and vanilla scent with calming emotion. This extends prior work on crossmodal correspondences in terms of stimuli (3D as opposed to 2D shapes), sample (children), and conveyed content (emotions). We outline how these findings can contribute to designing more inclusive interactive multisensory technologies.

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Citation

Metatla, O., Maggioni, E., Cullen, C., & Obrist, M. (2019). "like popcorn": crossmodal correspondences between scents, 3d shapes and emotions in children. Proceedings of the 2019 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (pp. 1–13). New York, NY, USA: Association for Computing Machinery. URL: https://doi.org/10.1145/3290605.3300689, doi:10.1145/3290605.3300689

BibTeX

@inproceedings{10.1145/3290605.3300689,
author = {Metatla, Oussama and Maggioni, Emanuela and Cullen, Clare and Obrist, Marianna},
title = {"Like Popcorn": Crossmodal Correspondences Between Scents, 3D Shapes and Emotions in Children},
year = {2019},
isbn = {9781450359702},
publisher = {Association for Computing Machinery},
address = {New York, NY, USA},
url = {https://doi.org/10.1145/3290605.3300689},
doi = {10.1145/3290605.3300689},
abstract = {There is increasing interest in multisensory experiences in HCI. However, little research considers how sensory modalities interact with each other and how this may impact interactive experiences. We investigate how children associate emotions with scents and 3D shapes. 14 participants (10-17yrs) completed crossmodal association tasks to attribute emotional characteristics to variants of the "Bouba/Kiki" stimuli, presented as 3D tangible models, in conjunction with lemon and vanilla scents. Our findings support pre-existing mappings between shapes and scents, and confirm the associations between the combination of angular shapes ("Kiki") and lemon scent with arousing emotion, and of round shapes ("Bouba") and vanilla scent with calming emotion. This extends prior work on crossmodal correspondences in terms of stimuli (3D as opposed to 2D shapes), sample (children), and conveyed content (emotions). We outline how these findings can contribute to designing more inclusive interactive multisensory technologies.},
booktitle = {Proceedings of the 2019 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems},
pages = {1–13},
numpages = {13},
keywords = {3d printing, bouba, crossmodal perception, emotions, kiki, multisensory interaction, smell, touch},
location = {Glasgow, Scotland Uk},
series = {CHI '19}
}