Scented products are being used more extensively in people’s life than ever before. In addition to traditional items such as perfume, daily necessities are being purchased exceedingly depending on scent. In this study, we intended to investigate scent in the perspective of arousal quality and people’s preference, for daily necessities associated with bathroom. Participants were instructed to choose their preferred scent in several situations of using bath/shower and toilets, and reported the rationale. As a consequence, it was found that people’s choice of scent significantly varied along with situations. Participants mostly pursued relaxation from low arousal scent, whilst refreshing and hygienic feeling from high arousal one. The pure preference of scent which was not narrated in rationale also influenced choices latently, indicating the tacitness in the Kansei process of decision making. Further research is encouraged to focus on both rationales and tacit knowledge to better understand people’s choices of scent.

Vibratory stimuli to viewers’ upper bodies enhance emotional experiences during audio-visual content. Studies have investigated the effects of stimulation conditions, such as vibration waveform and spatiotemporal patterns. We investigated how the timing of vibratory stimuli affect viewers’ skin conductance responses and subjective reports of audio-visual experiences. Vibratory stimuli were administered to the viewers’ torso at various timings around a monster’s sudden appearance in horror videos, and jump performances in figure skating videos. For horror videos, vibratory stimuli elicited fear. The fear of horror videos was maximized when the vibratory stimuli started simultaneously with the monster’s first appearance. For the jump performance scenes in figure skating videos, although the most exciting timing varied by participant, the vibration should be intensified as performers launch off the ice. These findings will help develop entertaining audio-visual content.

This paper proposes a method for the automatic design of personalized playlists that place a listener in a positive mood (uplifting or relaxing feelings) based on an individual’s impressions and pleasurable feelings of music. This method designs a playlist with gradually changing personal impressions of music and evokes positive moods with pleasant feelings. It estimates the subjective impressions and pleasurable feelings of all music in the database using the bagging method, a type of ensemble learning, and creates personalized playlists. This study investigates the changes in a listener’s mood before and after listening to playlists suitable for personal impressions, those for personal impressions and nonpersonalized pleasure, and those for personal impressions and pleasure, using a psychological scale. Consequently, numerous personalized playlists concerning impressions and pleasure have shifted the listener into a more positive mood than other types of playlists.

The heartbeat music interaction has been conceivable, but it is not been scientifically pursued yet. In this study, we developed a heartrate music feedback architecture where the tempo of the music track was continuously changed in accordance with users’ heart rate in a real-time manner and conducted a preliminary experiment to explore its psychophysiological effect in a laboratory setting. Compared with the control condition, in which the tempo of the music tracks was constant, there were significant differences among conditions in the respiration intervals, heart rate variability, and the beta power of brain waves. Furthermore, there was no distinct difference in the subjective scores and impressions for the musical tracks. The results imply that the difference in the physiological responses between the conditions may be derived not from perceptible or recognizable differences in music, but from purely physiological functioning at unconscious level.

Due to global population growth and economic development in emerging countries, worldwide meat demand is increasing. While, livestock farming poses various problems, meat alternatives are attracting increasing attention. There are signs that soy meat is becoming especially popular in Japan, reflecting its long cultural familiarity with soybean-based foods and making it a potential model for the promotion of meat alternatives. This study explored Japanese consumers’ motivators related to eating soy meat using logistic regression analysis to reveal a possible key to expanding the market. The results indicate that enhanced food neophilia, environmental consciousness, convenience, and sensory appeal lead to an increase in the frequency with which soy meat is eaten. Among these factors, convenience and sensory appeal can be managed by food companies. Thus, we expect that the market is likely to grow if food companies promote the convenience and sensory appeal of soy meat to Japanese consumers.

This study intends to discuss the potential effects of pixel art style on people’s perception. In Experiment A, 166 participants were randomly assigned to 2 groups, observed the same dining situation in pixel and vector art style respectively. Results showed that art style did not have a big impact on emotions, however raised a hypothesis that people might tend to believe the situation is in a past era when observing the pixel version. To test that, in Experiment B using 6 different dining situations involving 189 participants, it is found that people in pixel group indeed tend to believe that the situations happen in an earlier period. The effects of pixel art style on imagination remains unclear. This study revealed the potential impact of pixel art style on people’s temporal estimation. This phenomenon could be taken advantage of in game design and visual communication design.

Familiarity has been suggested to be crucial for recognizing objects instantly without conscious awareness. To investigate, researchers have employed continuous flash suppression (CFS), a phenomenon that suppresses stimulus presented to one eye for a period by rapidly flickering images to the other. Prior research discovered that noticeable stimuli like faces and upright objects broke suppression and became perceivable faster. However, it is still being determined if this applies to letters. Therefore, using upright and inverted Japanese and Hangul (also upright and inverted) letter stimuli, native Japanese participants were tested if they could recognize upright Japanese letters faster. Results indicated that orientation and language had no effect. In another experiment, modern and old Japanese (Itaigana) letters were used, and interestingly inverted Itaigana stimuli were recorded as the slowest to be perceived. The results indicate that inversion and curvilinear elements in Itaigana may have provoked awareness to enter slower, regardless of familiarity.

Providers sometimes create moving arrows, 3D objects, effects, and other items to guide the users of VR spaces. It should be possible to provide better visual guidance and increase its effectiveness by investigating how users feel about how these guiding items move in VR spaces. In this study, with the aim of creating more effective interactions for visual guidance, we provided subjects with the task of visually registering the trajectory of a moving body in a VR space using simple solid shapes. We investigated how the user’s perception of motion was affected by the speed of movement and range of movement of the object and by the distance between the user and the object. We found that the optimal distance for perception of motion in a VR space was 12 meters, and the wider the range of movement, the higher the correct answer rate. It was found that the object’s speed of movement had a small effect on the perception of motion if the speed was within the range in which its motion could be registered. It was also revealed that the combination of the distance between the user and the moving body and the speed at which it moves significantly affects the user’s perception of its motion. A subjective evaluation showed that users felt that ‘speed’ greatly affects their perception of motion.

Following the trend of boba food, this study explored how meal characteristics and consumers’ personal experience could influence consumers’ acceptance and preference of Chinese dishes with boba. Results showed that a meal’s hardness texture could significantly influence the taste preference of its mixture with boba. Soft meals with boba got significantly more credit than firm meals. The consumer’s perceived visual attractiveness of a boba meal was found to be essential to their willingness to try it and their pleasantness after tasting it. Attitudes towards boba meals were compared among people from Southeast Asia, Europe, and China. The Europeans showed lower food neophobia than the Asians, along with a higher tendency to try boba meals. After tasting meals with boba, the South Asians tend to give more credit, while the Chinese showed the lowest acceptance and preference for most of the boba meals.