Human Facial Expressions in Response to Taste and Smell Stimulation

doi:10.1016/S0065-2407(08)60349-3

Advances in Child Development and Behavior

Volume 13, 1979, Pages 257-295

https://doi.org/10.1016/S0065-2407(08)60349-3 Get rights and content

Publisher Summary

Facial expressions, whether innate or acquired, are one of the richest nonverbal communicational catalogs of man. This chapter shows facial expressions in the experimental part of the discussion and illustrates the three prototypes of facial play described by Darwin as that of “good spirit,” of “contempt,” and of “low spirit or disgust.” Darwin intended to describe facial expressions used by man to reflect his feelings, his mood, and his spirit. The expressions demonstrated in the chapter are by no means acquired; they are present at the date of birth, perhaps even earlier, and are elicitable by different chemical stimuli. The hedonically different meaning of the sweet and the bitter and the hedonically polar value of odors of fresh and good food and that of rotten one, unlock facial expressions identical to those indicating “high and low spirits.” The individual first exposed to typical stimulants of “good” and “bad” food-related chemical cues evaluates these signals at low levels of the central nervous system.

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Sweetness has been proposed to be an important quality in the decision to consume alcohol, and strong preferences for sweet tastes have been associated with alcohol abuse. However, alcohol is characterized by a number of other sensory properties, including astringency and bitterness that may drive preference and consumption. Spinelli et al. (2021) classified individuals into three sweet-sensory liking clusters (High Sweet-Liking, Moderate Sweet-Liking, and Inverted-U) that differed in their sweetness optima and sensory-liking patterns (relationship between liking and sweetness, bitterness and astringency perception in a food model). The current paper replicates the sweet sensory-liking clusters in a new set of participants (n = 1976), and extends the predicted value of these clusters examining their relationship to wine and other types of alcoholic beverages by gender using a split-sample approach on a total of over 3000 adults. The sweet sensory-liking clusters had a predictive relationship for the familiarity and liking of some alcoholic beverages characterized by stronger tastes, but not weekly alcohol intake levels. Thus, although sweet sensory-liking clusters may be associated with the type of beverages and frequency with which a person will drink and enjoy a type of alcoholic beverage, they are poor predictors of the quantity of alcohol that a person ingests over the course of a week.
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In the Netherlands, 4–8-year-old children consume proportionally the highest amounts of free sugars among all age groups, and in European countries, children’s sugar intake exceeds the World Health Organization’s recommendation. Restricting children’s access to sugary products could help reduce this consumption. However, it is unclear whether and how restriction is linked to children’s sugar intake and sweet taste preference. This study investigated the relationship between parental restriction of sugary products, children’s free sugar and fruit intake, as well as their sweet taste preference. Parents (N = 243) of 4–7-year-old children were asked to complete a survey that asked for their child’s consumption of fruits and free-sugar-containing products via a three-day food recall (three specified, non-consecutive days). Parental restriction was assessed via the Restricted Access Questionnaire. In a subset of children (N = 60), psycho-hedonic functions were mapped using the Monell two-series forced-choice paired comparison tracking test to estimate children’s optimal sweet taste preference. Regression analyses showed that more restricted children consumed less free sugars but more fruits than less restricted children as reported by the parents (p < 0.05). Parental restriction was unrelated to children’s sweet taste preference. In conclusion, our results imply that restriction is negatively linked to free sugar intake, positively linked to fruit consumption, and unrelated to sweet taste preference in 4–8-year-olds. Future research is needed to determine the causal and long-term effects of parental restrictions on children's sugar intake and sweet taste preference.
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Garlic, which was originally used medicinally, has become increasingly ubiquitous as a culinary ingredient in recent years. However, its popularity in British cooking has risen and fallen repeatedly over the centuries. While some commentators, perhaps most notably Mrs. Beeton, once described it as smelling ‘offensive’, other commentators nowadays claim that it imparts a gorgeous flavour to both savoury and sweet foods. Various explanations for garlic's mixed culinary fortunes are discussed, including the antimicrobial hypothesis, the perception of garlic as a ‘foreign’ ingredient (at least by those living in Britain), the malodour (garlic breath) long associated with those who have recently consumed this pungent allium, and the contemporary perception of it as a functional food. Given that it is difficult to assess whether the availability of different cultivars may have resulted in those living in Britain simply being exposed to less pungent varietals nowadays than previously, it remains uncertain just how much people's tastes (i.e., preferences) have changed as the years have gone by versus whether today's commercial alliums are simply less pungent than once they were.
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Existing research has offered insight into facial activities and their associations with hedonic liking during the consumption of basic food samples and suggests facial changes during consumption are linked to the hedonic evaluation of tastes and, thus related to the taster's perception rather than the tastes themselves. This study tests whether, during the consumption of commercially available dark chocolate, a complex food product, which can be high in bitterness but expectedly so, how facial activities are linked to the bitterness levels and the hedonic liking of the samples. To do this we carried out two studies with untrained consumers, the first of which captured temporally dynamic sensory perception during the consumption of dark chocolate samples of 36% and 85% cocoa content, using the Temporal Dominance of Sensations (TDS) approach. The second study captured facial EMG over the corrugator and zygomaticus muscles during the consumption of dark chocolate samples (36%, 70%, and 85% cocoa). Specifically, the aim of this research was to investigate whether corrugator activity had a greater association with bitterness perception, linked to cocoa, or hedonic evaluation. Capturing the dynamic sensory profile of chocolate samples allowed an investigation into the time points most evident of sensory variation related to the bitterness and sweetness of the taste, allowing insight into whether facial activities also deviated during this time. These data offer evidence to suggest that corrugator was associated with hedonic evaluation during consumption of the samples, with the most liked samples (being those with 70% and 36% cocoa) eliciting similar corrugator activities and less activity than the least liked 85% cocoa content sample; however, there was also evidence to suggest a significant variation in participants’ corrugator activity during the period of oral processing when bitterness was most evident in the 85% cocoa sample and sweetness was most evident in the 36% cocoa sample (i.e., the time when bitterness and sweetness were most divergent) Further investigation showed a variation in facial activities elicited during consumption of the 36% cocoa sample based on whether individuals were part of the group who favoured the 85% cocoa sample or the group favouring the 36% cocoa sample. The findings, therefore, suggest facial EMG, specifically over the corrugator, appears to be related to the hedonic evaluation of a complex food product and not the taste itself. Furthermore, being aware of the time points where sensory variations are most apparent between samples can allow for targeted investigation into facial EMG and its ability to distinguish food samples.

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Human Facial Expressions in Response to Taste and Smell Stimulation

Publisher Summary

Brain Research Bulletin

Brain Research

Archives of Oral Biology

Brain Research

Chemoreception in bacteria

“Decision”-making in bacteria: Cbemotactic response of Escherichia coli to conflicting stimuli

Science

Standards for use of the gust scale

Journal of Psychology

A general psychological scale of taste

Journal of Psychology

Species differences in taste preference

Journal of Comparative and Physiological Psychology

The physiology of olfaction in insects

Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences

The concept of neural centers

Concepts of ethology and their significance in the study of human behavior

Grundriss der vergleichenden Verhaltensforschung-Ethologie.

Emotion in the human face: Guidelines for research and integration of findings.

Central control of movement. (A report based on an NRP work session, 1970.)

Neurosciences Research Program Bulletin

Smiling in blind infants and the issue of innate versus acquired

Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry

Bau und Leistungen eines menschlichen Mittelhirnwesens (Arhinencephalie mit Encephalocoele) zugleich ein Beitrag zur Teratologie und Fasersystematic. (2 Klinischer Teil.)

Zentralblatt für die gesamte Neurologie und Psychiatie

Taste and its importance to the domestic chicken

British Poultry Science

Taste preference in chicken (Gallus domesticus L.)

British Poultry Science

Diencephalic stimulation and mouth movements in the chicken

British Poultry Science

The measurement of taste sensitivity to phenylthiourea (PTC)

Annals of Eugenics

Psychological and physical symptom formation in menopause

Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics