Taste Perception in the Presence of Noise

Bachelor Thesis from the year 2011 in the subject Psychology - Biological Psychology, grade: 1,0, University of Groningen (Faculty of Behavioural and Social Sciences), language: English, abstract: Abstract

We investigated the role of background music in the evaluation of gustatory stimuli. It was assumed that loud background noise influences taste perception due to its attentional demanding nature. To test for this hypothesis, we generated high levels of attentional demand by exposing participants to 1) loud noise and 2) an auditory attention tasks. The taste stimuli we used were sugar solutions at different levels of sweetness. Previous research suggested that high attentional demands result in decreased perceived sweetness and a decreased ability to detect sugar. We tested the perceived sweetness and detectability of sugar in the presence of loud background noise, in the presence of an attention task or with both as well as in a baseline condition without noise or attention task. The current study did not find an effect of loud noise or attention task on the perceived sweetness or detectability of sugar.