A comparison of English and Japanese taste languages: taste descriptive methodology, codability and the umami taste.
Everyday taste descriptions for a range of stimuli were obtained from selected groups of American and Japanese subjects, using a variety of stimuli, stimulus presentation procedures and response conditions. In English there was a tendency to use a quadrapartite classification system: 'sweet', 'sour', 'salty' and 'bitter'. The Japanese had a different strategy, adding a fifth label: 'Ajinomoto', referring to the taste of monosodium glutamate. This label was generally replaced by umami--the scientific term--by Japanese who were workers or trained tasters involved with glutamate manufacture. Cultural differences in taste language have consequences for taste psychophysicists who impose a quadrapartite restriction on allowable taste descriptions. Stimulus presentation by filter-paper or aqueous solution elicited the same response trends. Language codability was only an indicator of degree of taste mixedness/singularity if used statistically with samples of sufficient size; it had little value as an indicator for individual subjects.
D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007564:Japan; D007802:Language; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D011601:Psychophysics; D012660:Semantics; D012718:Set, Psychology; D013649:Taste; D014481:United States