RESUMO
We present CROCUFID: a CROss-CUltural Food Image Database that currently contains 840 images, including 479 food images with detailed metadata and 165 images of non-food items. The database includes images of sweet, savory, natural, and processed food from Western and Asian cuisines. To create sufficient variability in valence and arousal we included images of food with different degrees of appetitiveness (fresh, unfamiliar, molded or rotten, spoiled, and partly consumed). We used a standardized photographing protocol, resulting in high resolution images depicting all food items on a standard background (a white plate), seen from a fixed viewing (45°) angle. CROCUFID is freely available under the CC-By Attribution 4.0 International license and hosted on the OSF repository. The advantages of the CROCUFID database over other databases are its (1) free availability, (2) full coverage of the valence - arousal space, (3) use of standardized recording methods, (4) inclusion of multiple cuisines and unfamiliar foods, (5) availability of normative and demographic data, (6) high image quality and (7) capability to support future (e.g., virtual and augmented reality) applications. Individuals from the United Kingdom (N = 266), North-America (N = 275), and Japan (N = 264) provided normative ratings of valence, arousal, perceived healthiness, and desire-to-eat using visual analog scales (VAS). In addition, for each image we computed 17 characteristics that are known to influence affective observer responses (e.g., texture, regularity, complexity, and colorfulness). Significant differences between groups and significant correlations between image characteristics and normative ratings were in accordance with previous research, indicating the validity of CROCUFID. We expect that CROCUFID will facilitate comparability across studies and advance experimental research on the determinants of food-elicited emotions. We plan to extend CROCUFID in the future with images of food from a wide range of different cuisines and with non-food images (for applications in for instance neuro-physiological studies). We invite researchers from all parts of the world to contribute to this effort by creating similar image sets that can be linked to this collection, so that CROCUFID will grow into a truly multicultural food database.
RESUMO
In the current study participants explored a desktop virtual environment (VE) representing a suburban neighborhood with signs of public disorder (neglect, vandalism, and crime), while being exposed to either room air (control group), or subliminal levels of tar (unpleasant; typically associated with burned or waste material) or freshly cut grass (pleasant; typically associated with natural or fresh material) ambient odor. They reported all signs of disorder they noticed during their walk together with their associated emotional response. Based on recent evidence that odors reflexively direct visual attention to (either semantically or affectively) congruent visual objects, we hypothesized that participants would notice more signs of disorder in the presence of ambient tar odor (since this odor may bias attention to unpleasant and negative features), and less signs of disorder in the presence of ambient grass odor (since this odor may bias visual attention toward the vegetation in the environment and away from the signs of disorder). Contrary to our expectations the results provide no indication that the presence of an ambient odor affected the participants' visual attention for signs of disorder or their emotional response. However, the paradigm used in present study does not allow us to draw any conclusions in this respect. We conclude that a closer affective, semantic, or spatiotemporal link between the contents of a desktop VE and ambient scents may be required to effectively establish diagnostic associations that guide a user's attention. In the absence of these direct links, ambient scent may be more diagnostic for the physical environment of the observer as a whole than for the particular items in that environment (or, in this case, items represented in the VE).
