New Psychophysical Insights in Evaluating Genetic Variation in Taste

doi:10.1017/CBO9780511546389.033

24 - New Psychophysical Insights in Evaluating Genetic Variation in Taste

Published online by Cambridge University Press: 21 September 2009

Valerie B. Duffy and

Edited by

Rémi Gervais and

Katharine Fast: Affiliation:
Department of Surgery (Otolaryngology), Yale University School of Medicine, 333 Cedar Street, New Haven, CT 06520-8041, USA
Valerie B. Duffy: Affiliation:
Department of Surgery (Otolaryngology), Yale University School of Medicine, 333 Cedar Street, New Haven, CT 06520-8041, USA, and School of Allied Health Sciences, University of Connecticut
Linda M. Bartoshuk: Affiliation:
Department of Surgery (Otolaryngology), Yale University School of Medicine, 333 Cedar Street, New Haven, CT 06520-8041, USA
Catherine Rouby: Affiliation:
Université Lyon I
Benoist Schaal: Affiliation:
Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), Paris
Danièle Dubois: Affiliation:
Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), Paris
Rémi Gervais: Affiliation:
Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), Paris
A. Holley: Affiliation:
Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), Paris

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Summary

How awful is “awful”? And is my “awful” the same as yours? The answers to these questions require comparing sensory or hedonic experiences across individuals, one of the most difficult tasks for psychophysicists. This chapter aims to trace the evolution of sensory scaling techniques intended to provide such comparisons, focusing on taste and using the discovery of taste blindness as a starting line. The past 70 years have been exciting times in psychophysics and have witnessed the development of methods useful for quantifying not only the oral impact of a stimulus but also its appeal.

For several generations, psychophysicists have been concerned about our ability to scale sensory experiences. A 1,000-Hz, 98-decibel blast is a 1,000-Hz, 98-decibel blast, but we recognize that it may sound far more intense to the department chair's grandson than to the department chair herself. We recognize this because we accept that a certain auditory deficit may accompany the blooming of wisdom, but how do we go about quantifying perceived sound intensity so that we can compare the experiences of the young and old directly? Our scale may start in silence, but if we have assimilated the idea that a given sound will be of different perceived intensities to different people, where do we anchor our scale besides the bottom? The perceived strength of a cleanser's odor works the same way: The same concentration of scent is added to each bottle at the factory, but the aroma may strike some as overpowering, while being barely detectable to others.

Type: Chapter
Information: Olfaction, Taste, and Cognition , pp. 391 - 407

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511546389.033 [Opens in a new window]

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Print publication year: 2002

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