Taste response functions of adults and children using different rating scales

Abstract

The ability of children to estimate the strength of suprathreshold taste stimuli has received minimal investigation, and there have been few attempts to compare their responses directly with those of adults. Accordingly, the present study investigated three rating procedures for establishing the sweetness response functions of 87 adults and 8–9-year old children for sucrose following training with the visual stimulus, length. Similar sweetness response functions were obtained for both subject groups using a category scale or magnitude estimation procedure, whilst the functions for adults and children were different using a hand-separation procedure. The similar sweetness response functions for adults and children obtained with two of the procedures suggest that the sense of taste has reached maturity for the perception of suprathreshold sucrose stimuli by mid-childhood.