BOTH PERCEPTUAL AND CONCEPTUAL FACTORS INFLUENCE TASTE-ODOR AND TASTE-TASTE INTERACTIONS

Observers are often asked to make intensity judgments for a sensory at tribute of a stimulus that is embedded in a background of ''irrelevant '' stimulus dimensions. Under some circumstances, these background dim ensions of the stimulus can influence intensity judgments for the targ et attribute. For example, judgments of sweetness can be influenced by the other taste or odor qualities of a solution (Frank & Byram, 1988; Kamen et al., 1961). Experiments 1 and 2 assessed the influence of st imulus context, instructional set, and reference stimuli on cross-qual ity interactions in mixtures of chemosensory stimuli. Experiment 1 dem onstrated that odor-induced changes in sweetness judgments were dramat ically influenced when subjects rated multiple attributes of the stimu lus as compared with when they judged sweetness alone. Several odorant s enhanced sweetness when sweetness alone was judged, while sweetness was suppressed for these same stimuli when total-intensity ratings wer e broken down into ratings for the sweetness, saltiness, sourness, bit terness, and fruitiness of each solution. Experiment 2 demonstrated a similar pattern of results when bitterness was the target taste. In ad dition, Experiment 2 showed that the instructional effects applied to both taste-odor and taste-taste mixtures. It was concluded that the ta ste enhancement and suppression observed for taste-odor and taste-tast e mixtures are influenced by (1) instructional sets which influence su bjects' concepts of attribute categories, and (2) the perceptual simil arities among the quality dimensions of the stimulus.