Sweet odours and sweet tastes are conflated in memory.
Certain odours and certain tastes appear to share common perceptual properties. One example is sweetness, a perceptual experience that results from stimulation of taste receptors on the tongue typically by sugars. The experiment here examined for evidence of this perceptual similarity using a novel and indirect test. Participants were exposed six times each, to three odours (strawberry, caramel, and oregano) and three tastes (sucrose, saline, and citric acid). Following a 10-min interval, participants were given a surprise frequency estimation task, in which they had to judge how often each stimulus had occurred. If sweet-smelling strawberry and caramel odours really do share this perceptual characteristic in common with sweet tasting sucrose, then frequency estimates for sucrose should be overestimated relative to non-sweet tastes. Not only was this observed, but frequency estimates for sweet tastes were also found to correlate with (1) evaluations from a later test of similarity between these sweet smells and sucrose, and (2) the degree to which these odours smelled sweet. These findings suggest a shared perceptual feature between such odours and sucrose - sweetness - under conditions where no judgment of perceptual quality was required.
Stevenson
Richard J
RJ
Department of Psychology, Macquarie University, Sydney, NSW2109, Australia. richard.stevenson@psy.mq.edu.au
Oaten
Megan J
MJ
D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D001245:Association Learning; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007600:Judgment; D008297:Male; D011939:Mental Recall; D009812:Odorants; D011337:Probability Learning; D011601:Psychophysics; D012903:Smell; D013649:Taste; D055815:Young Adult