Interference between reading and gustative perception: Stroop effect for words and anagrams

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the cross-modal interference between taste perception and linguistic representations. Taste stimuli, words and anagrams were employed. Results show that anagrams are processed faster than words, but they are less accurate on taste identification. It is argued that this effect can be interpreted as an automatism; also, findings show that congruence is critical for gustative stimuli recognition. The congruence between gustative and visual modalities generates more recognitions than incongruent and control conditions. An ecological interpretation for this stroop effect is proposed.