associative learning about sensory attributes often
linked to positive psychological or physiological consequences of
water drinking may sometimes generalize to the point where these
attributes are perceived as refreshing in other contexts. This type of
learning about food experiences has been elegantly explored in
previous studies [92–94]. However, further work is needed before we
can conclude that “flavor-refreshing” learning is as robust as other
types of associative learning such as “odorant-sweet taste” learning
[95,96]. These two latter studies demonstrated that associative
learning between two sensory dimensions, e.g. strawberry odor and
sweetness, occurred when the two were conjointly perceived in
everyday food products. This implicit associative learning leads to a
perceptual association between several sensory dimensions which
can result in the enhancement of the intensity of one perceived
sensory dimension by another one. It could be argued that for the
refreshing perception previous food experience has a similar impact,
i.e. it induces perceptual associations between refreshing perception
and specific sensory dimensions.