| Resumo: | ABSTRACT: The interaction within sensations and the influence between one and another is something that has been studied for a long time, with commercial and medical purposes. Having this in mind, in the past few years we could see more advance in the direction to see the influence of visual sensation in recognizing and understanding different odors. Of all characteristics recognized by vision, the color is the most important one when it comes to the olfative identification of different kinds of food, besides, the color plays a crucial role in the sensorial analysis of food and its packaging features. This essay presents a study about associations between colors and odors recorded in the sensorial memory of 134 college students in universities from Castilla and Leon. The participants had to indicate which odor they associated with 11 different kinds of colors that were projected successively in a white screen. The answers were analyzed and evaluated to determine the subjacent odors, and then, they were grouped in families to facilitate the analysis based on the association of each color. 215 “kinds of odors” were obtained and were grouped in families of odors according to Yarrow’s (2007) classification. The families were grouped in 3 big groups: odor of vegetal products, odor of animal products and odor of many origins, also called abiotic group, with odors related to inanimate materials. A study was conducted color to color to indicate the number of overall odor attributed to each color, which indicates the divergence between respondents; the type and family odorant predominant; the coincidence between respondents matches by the frequency of citation of each “type of odor”; the difficulty of giving answers, determined by the number of answers does not know/no answer; the lack or even the use of terms that do not define odors. A global study was done, and also a comparison between populations of both sexes. In all cases we have looked for possible reasons for the associations made. The main results are summarized below: The study has shown that sensory memory, developed in multidimensional ways, can extrapolate and predispose the individual to the perception of certain olfactory sensations when stimulated by color perception. The effect of each color is different in relation to the type of expectations generated, their number, and intra-population variability presented. The influence or effect of color is as intense as are frequently the colored olfactory stimuli we encounter daily. The obtained results indicate that green, purple, orange and pink have a strong ability to evoke smells. The results also show that grey, burgundy and black have way less capacity to evoke odor. Overall, no major differences were detected between sexes, but in some cases the differences may be significant enough to be taken into consideration, especially when developing specific products for each of the different groups. These results, although guideline, may be useful to design products, food and package The establishment of definitive conclusions cannot be done without further study. It is important to continue collecting data, to increase the population surveyed and to test the strength of the results. Besides that, it is essential to study and consider the effect of other factors, including cultural, on associations between sensations. |
