L21 - Flavour Preference Learning

Question 1

What 4 components make up flavour?

Answer 1

taste, odour, texture, trigeminal (pain, fizz)

Question 2

Which two routes do odours reach the olfactory receptors through?

Answer 2

1. Orthonasally (via nostrils)

2. Restronasally (via channel at back of throat)

Question 3

Is there an innate hedonic reaction to odours?

Answer 3

NO - We learn our reactions to odours, even disgusting ones such as faeces

Liking and disliking flavours is due to learning

• Social learning
• Conditioning

Question 4

Mere exposure effect

Answer 4

Tend to find unusual tastes unpleasant

Question 5

Flavour-flavour learning

Answer 5

Associating flavour with taste

Question 6

Flavour-calorie learning

Answer 6

Associating flavour with nutritional value

- more sensitive to motivational state

Question 7

Harris: Latent inhibition and blocking effects in flavour learning

Answer 7

• Expose animal to sweet taste with no nutritional value
• Latent inhibition of sweetness as cue for calories so weakens overshadowing of almond by sweetness
• Blocking learning to like flavours too

Question 8

Surveys of drinks and weight
“Diet drinks more likely to be consumed by people that are overweight”

Explanations: (2)

Answer 8

1. Putting on weight diet is better option but doesn’t impact weight that much
   Drinking diet drinks increases body weight 2. (Swithers and Davidson): eat slightly sweet food underestimates the amount of energy so doesn’t compensate as fully by eating less afterwards (Sweetened yog experiment showed diet yog ate more and gained more weight)

Question 9

Problems with swithers-davidson experiment

Answer 9

• Guys getting diet food weight going up faster BUT animals vary in their acceptance of diet food, no point in including rats that don’t eat diet foods
  ○ Accidental bias of rats, huge variation in preference and amount they consumed
  ○ The ones that gained weight were the ones that were finicky
  ○ Shows some more applied aspect of flavour associations

Question 10

Does flavour-flavour demonstrate extinction?

Answer 10

No, FF learning is resistant to extinction.

Question 11

Does flavour-calorie demonstrate extinction?

Answer 11

YES, FC extinguishes rapidly

Question 12

Human flavour-caffeine associations?

Answer 12

There is a greater enhancement of flavour preference for caffeine if it is paired with sweetness, and if caffeine is paired with a bitter flavour as the caffeine cancels the effect of the bitterness so that there is no change in flavour pleasure (i.e. both sweetness and caffeine have an additive effect in flavour liking).

Question 13

Problems with human experiment

Answer 13

Hard to find flavours that people aren’t already familiar with / have a preference for

Question 14

Brunstrom and Flecher (2008): is flavour learning automatic?

Answer 14

• Stimuli: Novel tea
  
  • Got people to sample all teas then rank, then middle 3 selected, the most neutral
  • Get a tea with saccharin added and other 2 teas with no saccharin added
  • 2 trials to novel flavour
  • Post test: rank the teas, interested Add more
  • Found a preferences learning effect for sweetened food but only for hungry participants
  • No relationship between how well the recall of sweetened teas, maybe occurs without awareness!

Question 15

Saccharin vs sucrose

Answer 15

No nutritional value but sweetness in saccharin