Feeling the Flavour: Exploring Children's Touch–Taste Correspondences and Willingness to Try Unknown Foods for Child–Food Interaction Design

Paper Title

Feeling the Flavour: Exploring Children's Touch–Taste Correspondences and Willingness to Try Unknown Foods for Child–Food Interaction Design

Publication Info

• Topic area: Cross-sensory interactions in child–food interaction design.
• Keywords: Touch-taste correspondences, food education, sensory interaction, child-food interaction, willingness to try, multisensory design, food neophobia, tactile interfaces, virtual dining, gustatory illusions.

Background and Problem

• Problem / challenge: Limited understanding of how children form cross-sensory associations between touch and taste, and how these associations influence their willingness to try unfamiliar foods.
• Significance: Insights into touch–taste correspondences can inform food education, interaction design, and strategies to reduce food neophobia, fostering healthier and more diverse eating habits.
• Motivation and related work: Prior research has focused on adults and product marketing, with little exploration of children’s tactile experiences and rationale for taste expectations. Existing studies on food rejection emphasize texture but lack systematic examination of cross-sensory mappings in children.

Solution

• Proposed approach: A study involving 64 children (ages 10–11) interacting with eight textured materials hidden in mystery “food” boxes to explore touch–taste correspondences and willingness to try unknown foods.
• Novelty:
  1. Empirical evidence of children’s touch–taste mappings, including associations like sweetness with soft-brittle textures and saltiness with soft-plastic textures.
  2. Identification of association strategies used by children, such as familiar experiences and sensory features.
  3. Design implications for cross-sensory food interfaces, educational technologies, and virtual dining experiences.
• Procedure and key techniques:
  • Participants interacted with eight boxes containing non-edible textured materials (e.g., packing peanuts, elastisand, silicone).
  • Children rated expected tastes (sweet, salty, sour, bitter) and willingness to eat on a Likert scale (1–5).
  • Responses were recorded and analyzed for taste associations, willingness ratings, and association strategies.

Results

• Concrete findings:
  • Sweetness was strongly associated with soft textures (e.g., soft popcorn, gooey jelly), while saltiness was linked to brittle textures (e.g., dry noodles).
  • Bitter tastes were predominantly associated with hard textures (e.g., rough sponge).
  • Willingness to eat was highest for materials associated with sweetness (58% positive for soft popcorn) and lowest for bitterness (62.7% negative for rough sponge).
• Advantage over baselines:
  • First study to systematically examine touch–taste correspondences in children, revealing unique associations and strategies compared to adult-focused research.
• Experiments / evaluation:
  • Study involved 64 children interacting with eight textured materials, analyzed through video recordings and coded association strategies.
  • Statistical tests (chi-square, Bonferroni correction) identified significant correlations between texture, taste associations, and willingness ratings.
• Limitations and future work:
  • Limited cultural diversity and generalizability due to single-school participant pool.
  • Materials were found objects, limiting replicability; future work could use engineered textures (e.g., 3D printing).
  • Opportunities for cross-cultural and intergenerational studies to explore broader sensory mappings.

Summary

This study investigated how children form cross-sensory associations between touch and taste, revealing patterns such as sweetness linked to soft textures and bitterness to hard textures. Willingness to try unknown foods was influenced by perceived edibility, safety, and familiarity. Findings suggest design opportunities for multisensory food education tools, virtual dining experiences, and non-edible sensory exhibits. Future work could expand the scope to include engineered textures and cross-cultural perspectives, enhancing the applicability of these insights in child–food interaction design.