Charles Spence is an

experimental psychologist Experimental psychology refers to work done by those who apply experimental methods to psychological study and the underlying processes. Experimental psychologists employ human participants and animal subjects to study a great many topics, in ...

at the

University of Oxford The University of Oxford is a collegiate research university in Oxford, England. There is evidence of teaching as early as 1096, making it the oldest university in the English-speaking world and the world's second-oldest university in contin ...

. He is the head of the Crossmodal Research group which specializes in the research about the integration of information across different

sensory modalities Stimulus modality, also called sensory modality, is one aspect of a stimulus or what is perceived after a stimulus. For example, the temperature modality is registered after heat or cold stimulate a receptor. Some sensory modalities include: light ...

. He also teaches Experimental Psychology to undergraduates at

Somerville College Somerville College, a constituent college of the University of Oxford in England, was founded in 1879 as Somerville Hall, one of its first two women's colleges. Among its alumnae have been Margaret Thatcher, Indira Gandhi, Dorothy Hodgkin, ...

. He is currently a consultant for a number of multinational companies advising on various aspects of multisensory design. He has also conducted research on human-computer interaction issues on the Crew Work Station on the European Space Shuttle, and currently works on problems associated with the design of foods that maximally stimulate the senses, and with the effect of the indoor environment on mood, well-being, and performance. Charles has published more than 500 articles in scientific journals over the last decade. Charles has been awarded the 10th Experimental Psychology Society Prize, the British Psychology Society: Cognitive Section Award, the Paul Bertelson Award, recognizing him as the young European Cognitive Psychologist of the Year, and, most recently, the prestigious Friedrich Wilhelm Bessel Research Award from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation in Germany.Spence, C. (2007). Audiovisual multisensory integration. Acoustical science and technology, 28(2), 61-70.

Research

One of Spence's earliest and most notable experiments in the field of crossmodal food research was "The Role of Auditory Cues in Modulating the Perceived Crispness and Staleness of Potato Chips," published in the ''Journal of Sensory Studies'' in 2004. The experiment was the first to successfully show that food could taste different depending on changes in sound. In the experiment, Spence demonstrated that the pitch and volume of the noise made when biting into

Pringles Pringles is an American brand of stackable potato-based crisps. Originally sold by Procter & Gamble (P&G) in 1968 and marketed as "Pringle's Newfangled Potato Chips", the brand was sold in 2012 to the current owner, Kellogg's. As of 2011, Pr ...

chips affected people's perception of how fresh they were. Louder, higher-pitched crunch noises were rated by eaters to be 15% fresher on average than softer, lower-pitched crunch noises. Since then, his research has established that the sight, touch and sound of food can have large effects on its perceived taste. Other findings include that strawberry mousse is perceived as 10% sweeter when eaten from a white container over a black one, that coffee drunk from white mugs tastes almost two times more intense but only two-thirds as sweet as coffee drunk from a black mug, and that eaters perceive yogurt to be roughly 25% more filling when its plastic container weighs two and a half ounces more.

References

External links

* Year of birth missing (living people) Living people English psychologists Fellows of Somerville College, Oxford {{UK-psychologist-stub