ELIMINATING ARTIFACTS IN THE STUDY OF SINGULARITY/MIXEDNESS OF TASTE STIMULI

Taste stimuli with a single solute were not judged as tasting equally singular; this confirmed earlier results, except in this study the possibility of the results being caused by trigeminal effects was virtually eliminated. Binary mixtures were generally perceived as more mixed than single solute stimuli, indicating a degree of analytic mixing. However, a caffeine/KCl mixture was perceived as more singular tasting than some single solute stimuli, indicating a degree of synthetic mixing. A preliminary examination was made of the hypotheses that the perceived mixedness of a taste mixture might be determined by a summation of the mixedness of its components or alternatively by latency effects.