Abstract: PURPOSE: This study aims to map systematically the affective pictures with basic taste perception.
METHODS: In this study, 118 college students (58 boys and 60 girls) were selected from Liaoning Normal University (LNU) and Changshu Institute of Technology (CIT).To do so pictures from Chinese Affective Picture System (CAPS) and from other online website are selected and reorganized according to the liking and arousal ratings of the participants. The pictures are divided into positive, neutral and negative groups according to the liking scores. Each group is divided into mild, medium, strong sub-groups according to the arousal scores. The participants were requested to choose one semantic taste from the four basic taste words (acid, sweet, bitter, salty) as quickly as possible when they were exposed to one picture in random order
RESULTS: The results show that affective positive pictures are significantly associated with sweet taste. And the association gets stronger when hedonic rating increases. The affective negative pictures are significantly associated with bitter taste, particularly with strong negative pictures. The mild to medium negative pictures are associated significantly with acid taste. The neutral pictures are not particularly associated with any taste.
CONCLUSIONS: Our observation in this study supports the conclusions that the emotional processing status induced by sensory stimuli such as vision can have a regulating effect on sensory perception like taste. In other words, the emotional status may contribute as an important regulator involved in the cross-modal interaction and modulate the perception.

Key words: visual, taste, direct mapping, affective pictures