Short article Inhibition of evaluative and perceptual odour—tastelearning by attention to the stimulus elements

摘要

Pairing of odours and tastes in solution results in the odour taking on the taste's hedonic and percep-tual properties. Theoretical accounts of such conditioning propose that the stimulus elements form aconfiguration with hedonic and/or perceptual properties. One implication of this account is that con-figural binding may be inhibited by allocation of attention to the individual elements during con-ditioning (analytical attention). This was tested here by training participants to attend analyticallyor synthetically during pairing of odours with either sucrose or water. Differential conditioningeffects for sucrose- and water-paired odours were seen only in the synthetic group, with sucrose-paired odours increasing in both smelled sweetness and liking. These data support configuralmodels as explanations for these forms of associative learning and emphasize the role of top-downprocesses in mediating transfer of perceptual and hedonic properties from tastes to odours.