Perceptual processing of taste quality

Publisher Website
Google Scholar
Abstract
A series of experiments investigated the ability of human subjects to perceptually isolate single tastes from mixtures. Using a speeded classification task, subjects were required to sort taste mixtures according to experimenter defined relevant features. Taste mixtures were formed by combining salty and sweet tastes with sour and bitter tastes either orthogonally or in a correlated fashion. Subjects then sorted mixtures into two categories, salty and sweet or sour and bitter. Sorting efficiency was always poorer when mixtures were sorted as compared to sorting single tastes. This was true whether the mixtures tastes were in orthogonal or correlated combinations. Mechanisms of perceptual processing that might account for these results are discussed.