Wine fantasy and experts
A fruity, fresh wine brimful of tropic aromas of ripe lime, pineapple and passionfruit. Did you form a mental image of this wine? Is the smell and taste of this wine imaginable? It is clear wine experts talk differently about wine than novices. But Ilja Croijmans (Utrecht 木瓜福利影视), Laura Speed (Radboud 木瓜福利影视), Artin Arshamian (Stockholm 木瓜福利影视) and Asifa Majid (木瓜福利影视 of York) wanted to know whether wine experts are also better at imagining wine. Their findings are now published in the academic journal Cognitive Science.
By comparing a group of wine experts to general consumers in a study conducted at Radboud 木瓜福利影视, Croijmans and colleagues found out that wine experts indeed have a more vivid imagination for wine than consumers. The experts and consumers were asked to rate how vivid the imagined color, smell and taste of wines in different scenarios were. Croijmans: 鈥渁n example of one of these scenarios was to imagine a wine that people would drink with a light lunch that they have at a bistro. Wine experts rated the color, smell and taste of the wine they imagined in front of them as much more vivid compared to the consumers鈥. According to Croijmans, the ability to imagine provides information on how someone becomes a wine expert. With practice, memory for wines becomes better, descriptions for wines become more specific and more informative, and wine is imaged more vividly.
Wine academy students
It could be the case that people that become wine experts have a better imagination for wines, and that this is the reason they become wine experts in the first place. To investigate this possibility, students were followed. Croijmans: 鈥渢hey completed a set of questionnaires before they started with the course, and afterwards. The training had a significant effect on how vivid they imagined wines. That shows again that our thinking is influenced by experience.鈥 Imagining the smell and flavor of wine also provides an opportunity to practice wine skills without actually having to drink wines, comparable to the techniques professional athletes commonly use to become better without the risk of strains and injury.
Like chess
Croijmans says it鈥檚 striking that wine experts and students after the course did have a more vivid imagery for wines, but not for common smells or other visual scenarios. 鈥渢he influence of experience seems to be limited to that with which someone trains and practices. That overlaps with findings from other domains, such as chess or sports.鈥
For a follow-up study, Croijmans and colleauges are looking for wine experts who are interested in participating in an online study. If you are interested, you can contact him via i.m.croijmans@uu.nl.
The article, titled Expertise shapes multimodal imagery for wine is published in Cognitive Science: