Human taste contrast and self-reported measures of anxiety

Percept Mot Skills. 1999 Apr;88(2):384-6. doi: 10.2466/pms.1999.88.2.384.

Abstract

Successive negative taste contrast in humans was demonstrated with a common taste stimulus, i.e., cherry-flavored Kool-Aid. A total of 31 male and female college-aged participants rated a 7% sucrose solution which was cherry-flavored as less sweet when it was preceded by a 28% rather than a 7% sucrose solution which was cherry-flavored. Because drugs such as the benzodiazepines affect taste contrast in rats and act as anxiolytics in humans, the present experiment also examined whether several self-reported measures of anxiety were related to taste contrast in humans. Neither scores on Taylor's Manifest Anxiety Survey nor those on the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory were related to "sweetness" ratings or contrast effects.

MeSH terms

  • Analysis of Variance
  • Animals
  • Anxiety Disorders / diagnosis*
  • Discrimination, Psychological / physiology*
  • Dose-Response Relationship, Drug
  • Female
  • Humans
  • Male
  • Personality Inventory / statistics & numerical data
  • Rats
  • Sucrose / administration & dosage
  • Taste / physiology*
  • Taste Threshold / physiology

Substances

  • Sucrose