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Module 1.6d

for vanilla flavoring ( Haller et al., 1999 ). The taste-exposure phenomenon even extends CULTURAL
to the womb. In one experiment, babies whose mothers drank carrot juice late in their AWARENESS
pregnancy and during the early weeks of nursing developed a liking for carrot-flavored Developing taste preferences for TEACH 1.6-14
cereal ( Mennella et al., 2001 ). ( Module 4.7 explores cultural influences on our taste foods we are used to eating is a good

preferences.) example of how culture influences Enrichment
our beliefs and behaviors. We might
decide we don’t like an unfamiliar dish Point out to students that, according
before we even try it.
TABLE 1.6-2 The Survival Functions of Basic Tastes to Linda Bartoshuk, taste buds are

Taste Indicates innervated by two cranial nerves: one
Sweet Energy source carries taste signals and the other
Salty Sodium essential to physiological processes carries pain and touch information.
Sour Potentially toxic acid Supertasters perceive more pain from
Bitter Potential poisons Lauren Burke/Getty Images oral irritants, including chili peppers,
Umami Proteins to grow and repair tissue ethyl alcohol, and carbonation. Fat
Macmillan Learning sensation. If you’re a supertaster,
Oleogustus Fats for energy, insulation, and cell growth in food is also perceived as a touch
Taste is a chemical sense. Inside each little bump on the top and sides of your tongue Linda Bartoshuk (born 1938) you’re a super perceiver of fat in food.
Distributed by Bedford, Freeman & Worth Publishers. Not for redistribution.
are 200 or more taste buds, each containing a pore that catches food chemicals and releases As a student in the late 1950s era
neurotransmitters ( Roper & Chaudhari, 2017 ). In each pore, 50 to 100 taste receptor cells of gender discrimination, Bartoshuk
( 2010 ) abandoned her interest in
project antenna-like hairs that sense food molecules. Some receptors respond mostly to astronomy when she learned that ENGAGE 1.6-14
sweet-tasting molecules, others to the other flavors’ molecules. Each receptor transmits its “women weren’t allowed to use
message to a matching partner cell in your brain’s temporal lobe ( Barretto et al., 2015 ). Some the big telescopes.” This led her to (10 minutes) Have students count
Copyright © Bedford, Freeman & Worth Publishers.

people have more taste buds than others, enabling them to experience more intense tastes. psychophysics — the study of how
physical stimuli, such as substances
Psychologist Linda Bartoshuk (2000) has researched these supertasters Other researchers on the tongue, create our subjective the number of taste buds they have
.
have investigated average-ability medium tasters and lower-than-average nontasters. experience. While studying taste on their tongues. Tell them to punch
For most people, it doesn’t take much to trigger a taste response. If a stream of water is experiences, she discovered a hole in an index card and place
supertasters, who can taste some
pumped across your tongue, the addition of a concentrated salty or sweet taste for but one- things the rest of us cannot.
tenth of a second will get your attention ( Kelling & Halpern, 1983 ). When a friend asks for it on the tip of their tongue. Using
“just a taste” of your smoothie, you can squeeze off the straw after a mere instant. SPOTLIGHT ON: blue food coloring, they should then
Taste receptors reproduce themselves every week or two, so if you burn your tongue it Linda Bartoshuk paint the tongue through the hole.
hardly matters. However, as you grow older, the number of taste buds decreases, as does
taste sensitivity ( Cowart, 1981 ). (No wonder adults enjoy strong-tasting foods that children Ask students to count the number
®
resist.) Smoking and alcohol use accelerate these declines. People who have lost their sense AP Science Practice of fungiform papillae (the structure
of taste have reported that food tastes like “straw” and is hard to swallow ( Cowart, 2005 ). Research that contains taste buds), which will
There’s more to taste than meets the tongue. Wear a blindfold when eating a meal and There is an important difference
you will attend more to (and savor) its taste ( O’Brien & Smith, 2019 ). Expectations also between random assignment and appear as bright pink bumps) in the
influence taste. When told a sausage roll was “vegetarian,” nonvegetarian people judged random sampling. In this taste study, hole. Supertasters will have many of
it decidedly inferior to its identical partner labeled “meat” ( Allen et al., 2008 ). In another researchers might randomly assign these bumps, while those who are not
participants to get the “vegetarian”
experiment, hearing that a wine cost $90 rather than its real $10 price made it taste better or “meat” sausage roll, while also
and triggered more activity in a brain area that responds to pleasant experiences ( Plassmann using random sampling in which supertasters will have few.
,
et al., 2008 ). Contrary to Shakespeare’s presumption (in Romeo and Juliet ) that “a rose by any every person in the population being
other name would smell as sweet,” labels matter. And speaking of smell . . . studied has an equal chance of
participating. Random assignment
allows us to draw cause-effect
Smell conclusions. Random sampling ENGAGE 1.6-14
allows us to generalize our findings.
Inhale, exhale. Between birth’s first inhale and death’s last exhale, an average 500 million (15 minutes) As we learned in Module
breaths of life-sustaining air bathe human nostrils in a stream of scent-laden molecules. The 1.1, certain taste preferences are genet-
resulting experience of smell — olfaction — is strikingly intimate. With every breath, you olfaction our sense of smell.

inhale something of whatever or whoever it is you smell. ically determined due to one’s ability to
taste bitter substances. Use Student
Sensation: Skin, Chemical, and Body Senses and Sensory Interaction Module 1.6d 149 Activity: Tasting Salt and Sugar to test if
students are tasters or nontasters.
M1.6d: Tasting Salt and Sugar
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PRACTICE
referred to as “pendula fruit” and “langua
Research Methods & Design (SP 2) steaks,” however, participants were far
(10 minutes) Explain to your students that less cooperative. Use this study to review
psychologists Marcia Pelchat and Patricia research methods with students. What
Pliner tested whether it is the novelty of a was the independent variable? (Name of
food or something else that prompts people food.) What was the dependent variable?
to reject it. They gave two groups of people (Willingness to taste the food.) What
identical foods. When the foods were conclusion can the researchers draw and
accurately named (“chopped tomatoes” and why? (Unfamiliar names cause people
“beefsteak”), the participants were quite to reject food; because the study was
willing to taste them. When the foods were experimental.)

Sensation: Skin, Chemical, and Body Senses and Sensory Interaction Module 1.6d 149

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