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Taste Sensitivity and Aging: High Incidence of Decline Revealed by Repeated Threshold Measures
Abstract
Contrary to what has often been said about the subject, decline in taste sensitivity with aging characterizes virtually everybody and is not the artificial result of averaging large losses of a minority with negligible losses of a majority. This assertion is supported by six repeated measures of sucrose thresholds in each of 15 older (over 64 years) and 15 younger (under 27 years) adult subjects. Threshold was determined by a procedure similar to past studies and with the same results: much scatter and considerable overlap between the thresholds of younger and older subjects. A quite contrasting picture emerges, however, when each subject's six threshold determinations are averaged. Averaging shrinks the individual differences among subjects, as well as the over-lap between younger and older subjects. Although virtually all elderly subjects now revealed taste weakness, reliable individual differences in degree of weakness abound among them, suggesting various individual rates of physiological aging. In contrast, young persons exhibit greater uniformity of sensitivity. These findings were brought out by inter-test correlations, which were much higher for the older subjects; i.e. an older subject who tended to score high (low) on one test tended to score high (low) on the other tests. The study confirms the tenuous nature of brief threshold tests as indices of personal sensitivity as found earlier also in olfactory thresholds and in concurrent measurement of two-point touch thresholds in the present study. This revealed correlated losses between repeated taste and touch thresholds from the same 15 older subjects, unrelated to their exact chronological age.
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From Atypical interoception as a common risk factor for psychopathology: A review (2021) · cites this paper as Stevens et al., 1995
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“The method of repeated threshold measures used in the present study has been recommended by Stevens and Dadarwala (1993) and Stevens et al. (1995) who showed that the variability in thresholds for age groups narrows markedly as the number of tests averaged increases from one up to four or six.”
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Metadata
- Authors
- Stevens, J. C., Cruz, L. A., Hoffman, J. M., & Patterson, M. Q.
- Affiliations
- Yale University (US)
- Corresponding author
- Stevens, Joseph C.
- Venue
- Chemical Senses
- Publisher
- Oxford University Press (OUP)
- Published
- 1995
- Volume
- 20
- Issue
- 4
- Pages
- 451-459
- ISSN
- 0379-864X (ISSN-L)
- 1464-3553
- OpenAlex
- W1995439904
- Cited by
- 135
- References
- 0
- Citations by year
- 2026: 3 · 2025: 2 · 2024: 6 · 2023: 1 · 2022: 2 · 2021: 2 · 2020: 3 · 2019: 2 · 2018: 7 · 2017: 3 · 2016: 1 · 2015: 12 · 2014: 6 · 2013: 11 · 2012: 4
- FWCI
- 6.22
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- Chemical Senses (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Funders
- National Institutes of Health (5r01ag010295-08)
- National Institute on Aging (AG 10295, AG04287)
- Topics
- Health Sciences › Nursing › Nutrition and Dietetics › Biochemical Analysis and Sensing Techniques
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Sensory Systems › Olfactory and Sensory Function Studies
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Tactile and Sensory Interactions
- Keywords
- taste sensitivity, aging, individual differences, physiological aging, inter-test correlation, odor threshold
- MeSH terms
- Adult, Aged, Aged, 80 and over, Aging, Discrimination Learning, Humans, Individuality, Sensitivity and Specificity, Sensory Thresholds, Taste Disorders, Taste Threshold, Touch, Incidence
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