Page 149 - 2024-bfw-MyersAP4e

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

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
our beliefs and behaviors. We might
decide we don’t like an unfamiliar dish
before we even try it.
TABLE 1.6-2 The Survival Functions of Basic Tastes

Taste Indicates

Sweet Energy source
Distributed by Bedford, Freeman & Worth Publishers. Not for redistribution.
Salty Sodium essential to physiological processes
Sour Potentially toxic acid
Bitter Potential poisons Lauren Burke/Getty Images
Copyright © Bedford, Freeman & Worth Publishers.
Umami Proteins to grow and repair tissue
Macmillan Learning
Oleogustus Fats for energy, insulation, and cell growth

Taste is a chemical sense. Inside each little bump on the top and sides of your tongue Linda Bartoshuk (born 1938)
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
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

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
.
have investigated average-ability medium tasters and lower-than-average nontasters. experience. While studying taste
For most people, it doesn’t take much to trigger a taste response. If a stream of water is experiences, she discovered
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
“just a taste” of your smoothie, you can squeeze off the straw after a mere instant. SPOTLIGHT ON:
Taste receptors reproduce themselves every week or two, so if you burn your tongue it Linda Bartoshuk
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
®
resist.) Smoking and alcohol use accelerate these declines. People who have lost their sense AP Science Practice
of taste have reported that food tastes like “straw” and is hard to swallow ( Cowart, 2005 ). Research
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
influence taste. When told a sausage roll was “vegetarian,” nonvegetarian people judged random sampling. In this taste study,
it decidedly inferior to its identical partner labeled “meat” ( Allen et al., 2008 ). In another researchers might randomly assign
experiment, hearing that a wine cost $90 rather than its real $10 price made it taste better participants to get the “vegetarian”
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
,
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
allows us to generalize our findings.
Inhale, exhale. Between birth’s first inhale and death’s last exhale, an average 500 million
breaths of life-sustaining air bathe human nostrils in a stream of scent-laden molecules. The
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.

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

03_myersAPpsychology4e_28116_ch01_002_163.indd 149 15/12/23 9:27 AM