Reaction time in the perceptual processing of taste quality

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Abstract
A series of experiments examined possible strategies human subjects might use in tasks requiring rapid detection or recognition of a taste quality. In a reaction time (RT) paradigm, subjects were to decide whether each of a series of stimuli flowed over the tongue contained a previously designated target taste. Several tasks of varying difficulty were used. The simplest task required subjects to decide whether the target taste or water was presented. The most difficult task required discrimination between two different target tastes in a series of mixtures formed by orthogonally combining the target taste with two different irrelevant tastes. The speed at which subjects could detect and/or recognize target tastes was related to the RT for the particular taste. However, it was also clear that other variables, including the specific stimuli in the mixtures and the cognitive demands placed on the subjects, influenced performance. These results suggest that differences in taste onset time, as indexed by RT, can serve as a cue which subjects use to aid identification of single tastes in a mixture. It is concluded that the ease with which subjects can identify single tastes in a mixture is related to, among other variables, the differences in taste onset time between the tastes.