Conditioned taste aversions: From poisons to pain to drugs of abuse.
Learning what to eat and what not to eat is fundamental to our well-being, quality of life, and survival. In particular, the acquisition of conditioned taste aversions (CTAs) protects all animals (including humans) against ingesting foods that contain poisons or toxins. Counterintuitively, CTAs can also develop in situations in which we know with absolute certainty that the food did not cause the subsequent aversive systemic effect. Recent nonhuman animal research, analyzing palatability shifts, has indicated that a wider range of stimuli than has been traditionally acknowledged can induce CTAs. This article integrates these new findings with a reappraisal of some known characteristics of CTA and presents a novel conceptual analysis that is broader and more comprehensive than previous accounts of CTA learning.
Department of Psychology, University of Illinois at Chicago, 1007 West Harrison Street, Chicago, IL, 60607, USA. jlin2@uic.edu.
Jian-You
JY
Lin
Department of Psychology, University of Illinois at Chicago, 1007 West Harrison Street, Chicago, IL, 60607, USA.
Joe
J
Arthurs
Department of Psychology, University of Illinois at Chicago, 1007 West Harrison Street, Chicago, IL, 60607, USA. sreilly@uic.edu.
Steve
S
Reilly
D000818:Animals; D001245:Association Learning; D001362:Avoidance Learning; D002648:Child; D003214:Conditioning, Classical; D003216:Conditioning, Operant; D003463:Cues; D005518:Food Preferences; D006801:Humans; D013287:Illicit Drugs; D008297:Male; D011939:Mental Recall; D010146:Pain / Q000523:psychology*; D011042:Poisons; D011788:Quality of Life; D012903:Smell; D013649:Taste; D013997:Time Factors
D013287:Illicit Drugs; D011042:Poisons
Conditioned taste aversion; False positives; Palatability; Taste neophobia