Food Sounds: How Much Information Do They Contain?

ABSTRACT Subjects listened to tape recorded sounds made by crushing each of 18 different foods. After listening to each sound, they selected from a list of the 18 foods the four foods most likely to have produced that sound. Many of the subjects were able to use the information present in the sound to identify the food; however, their performance was far from perfect. The foods differ in the recognizability of their crushing sounds. The recognizability of a food's sound does not appear to depend on the familiarity or the class (e.g., vegetable, cracker) of food.