title: Discriminating the stimulus elements during human odor-taste learning: a successful analytic stance does not eliminate learning.
abstract: Odor "sweetness" may arise from experiencing odors and tastes together, resulting in a flavor memory that is later reaccessed by the odor. Forming a flavor memory may be impaired if the taste and odor elements are apparent during exposure, suggesting that configural processing may underpin learning. Using a new procedure, participants made actual flavor discriminations for one odor-taste pair (e.g., Taste A vs. Odor X-Taste A) and mock discriminations for another (e.g., Odor Y-Taste B vs. Odor Y-Taste B). Participants, who were successful at detecting the actual flavor discriminations, demonstrated equal amounts of learning for both odor-taste pairings. These results suggest that although a capacity to discriminate flavor into its elements may be necessary to support learning, whether participants experience a configural or elemental flavor representation may not.
authors: Department of Psychology, Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia. dick.stevenson@mq.edu.au
authors: Richard J
authors: RJ
authors: Stevenson
authors: Mehmet K
authors: MK
authors: Mahmut
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D000704:Analysis of Variance; D001245:Association Learning / Q000502:physiology*; D004192:Discrimination, Psychological / Q000502:physiology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D009812:Odorants; D011930:Reaction Time / Q000502:physiology; D013649:Taste; D055815:Young Adult