Differential context effects in taste perception

Abstract

A series of three experiments explored differential context effects in judgements of taste intensity. For example, a given concentration of NaCl was judged stronger than a given concentration of sucrose in one contextual condition (where the stimulus set comprised low concentrations of NaCl and high ones of sucrose), but was judged weaker in another condition (where the concentrations reversed). Overall, differential context effects were larger when subjects judged NaCl and sucrose than when they judged NaCl and NaCl sucrose mixtures, an outcome predicted by the hypothesis that the magnitude of differential context effects depends on the degree of qualitative similarity between the subsets of stimuli. This pattern of results mimics those previously obtained for judgements of loudness of tones at different sound frequencies, and thereby suggests that a common mechanism may underlie contextual interactions in different modalities; moreover, this mechanism may bear implications for current theories of the coding of taste quality and intensify.