ABSTRACT
Broadly defined, animal taste psychophysics is the scientific determination of the relationship between the physical properties of gustatory stimuli and the behavioral actions of nonhuman animals. Because perceptual experience cannot be measured directly, it must be inferred from behavior, a fact no less true for humans. The application of animal psychophysical procedures to the study of taste began in earnest in the 1950s concomitant with the surge of research on operant and classical conditioning theory and practice. Before this time, intake measures were primarily used to gauge responsiveness of nonhuman animals to taste compounds (e.g., Blum et al., 1941; Patton et al., 1944; Richter, 1936; Richter and Campbell, 1940). Although the intake measure remains the staple of behavioral taste testing, a variety of more sophisticated procedures have been developed and used over the last few decades to assess taste function in animals. These procedures have successfully been applied to measure taste processes primarily in the rat, but there is every reason to believe that they could be adapted for use with a diversity of mammals (e.g., Aspen et al., 1999; Reilly et al., 1994). These test paradigms all possess specific attributes and limitations-some practical, some conceptual. The goal of this chapter is to describe the basic types of procedures available and discuss methodological and interpretive issues associated with their application in the laboratory (see Chapters 18 and 19 for parallel issues in assessing olfactory function).
