ReviewCognitive research: principles and implications2020
Olfactory-colour crossmodal correspondences in art, science, and design.
Review in Cognitive research: principles and implications, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 35 papers.
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Who cites it
35 citing papers in PubMed.
- Color-modulated olfactory testing using RAPPIT: An innovative tool for early detection of cognitive decline.Journal of Alzheimer's disease : JAD · 2026Article
- The Meanings of Synesthetic Metaphors Closely Align With Crossmodal Correspondences.Cognitive science · 2026Article
- Device color influences e-cigarette flavor expectations, perception, and appeal.Chemical senses · 2026Article
- Shedding light on imagined scents: an fNIRS feasibility study of olfactory mental imagery and semantic cueing.Frontiers in neuroscience · 2026Article
- Associating (dis)consonance of harmonic intervals with emotional valences: exploring the visual representation of music through crossmodal associations.Frontiers in psychology · 2026Article
- Painting with odors: How olfactory stimuli influence artistic expression, emotional response, visual perception, and object selection.PloS one · 2026Article
- Limonene Selectively Modulates Visual Attention Through P300 Suppression: A Comparative Event-Related Potential Study With Lemon Essential Oil.Brain and behavior · 2025Article
- The diatonic sound of scent imagery.Perception · 2025Article
- Analysis of Pleasure and Displeasure in Harmony Between Colored Light and Fragrance by the Left and Right OFC Response Differences.Sensors (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Article
- Augmenting art crossmodally: possibilities and pitfalls.Frontiers in psychology · 2025Review
- Text-to-image models reveal specific color-emotion associations.Frontiers in psychology · 2025Article
- The poetry of senses: exploring semantic mediation in timbre-aroma correspondences.Frontiers in psychology · 2025Article
- Cues for odor naming affect performance and brain connectivity.Frontiers in human neuroscience · 2025Article
- Sensory translation between audition and vision.Psychonomic bulletin & review · 2024Review
- Physicochemical features partially explain olfactory crossmodal correspondences.Scientific reports · 2023Article
- Odors modulate color appearance.Frontiers in psychology · 2023Article
- Visual communication via the design of food and beverage packaging.Cognitive research: principles and implications · 2022Review
- Coloured hearing, colour music, colour organs, and the search for perceptually meaningful correspondences between colour and sound.i-Perception · 2022Article
- A three-factor benefits framework for understanding consumer preference for scented household products: psychological interactions and implications for future development.Cognitive research: principles and implications · 2022Review
- Visualise the tastes from the label: A study on the taste-colour crossmodal association of crisp and dry.Frontiers in psychology · 2022Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
1 author.
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No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
The last few years have seen a rapid growth of interest amongst researchers in the crossmodal correspondences. One of the correspondences that has long intrigued artists is the putative association between colours and odours. While traditionally conceptualised in terms of synaesthesia, over the last quarter century or so, at least 20 published peer-reviewed articles have assessed the consistent, and non-random, nature of the colours that people intuitively associate with specific (both familiar and unfamiliar) odours in a non-food context. Having demonstrated such consistent mappings amongst the general (i.e. non-synaesthetic) population, researchers have now started to investigate whether they are shared cross-culturally, and to document their developmental acquisition. Over the years, several different explanations have been put forward by researchers for the existence of crossmodal correspondences, including the statistical, semantic, structural, and emotional-mediation accounts. While several of these approaches would appear to have some explanatory validity as far as the odour-colour correspondences are concerned, contemporary researchers have focussed on learned associations as the dominant explanatory framework. The nature of the colour-odour associations that have been reported to date appear to depend on the familiarity of the odour and the ease of source naming, and hence the kind of association/representation that is accessed. While the bidirectionality of odour-colour correspondences has not yet been rigorously assessed, many designers are nevertheless already starting to build on odour-colour crossmodal correspondences in their packaging/labelling/branding work.
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Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.