Conditioned taste aversion

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

It has been suggested that this article or section be merged with Taste aversion. (Discuss)

Conditioned taste aversion (CTA) is a gustatory phenomenon where an animal learns to avoid a newly encountered taste after suffering adverse post-ingestive effects. CTA is a survival mechanism that prevents animals from eating poisonous substances. Symptoms such as nausea, upset-stomach, vomiting and diarrhea following the ingestion of usually a new substance will cause the animal to avoid the food in the future even if it is the only food available. CTA is a classical conditioning paradigm where the new taste is the conditioned stimulus (CS) and the adverse effect(s) is the unconditioned stimulus (US).

The fascinating fact about CTA is that one can give an animal or person a conditioned taste aversion to almost any taste, given that:

1. The taste is entirely new. If the flavor has been encountered before, the effect will not be as strong or there will be no effect at all. The effect is called latent inhibition.
2. The animal makes an association between malaise and the taste, which means that malaise should shortly follow ingestion.

Conditioned taste aversion is often used in laboratories to study gustation and learning in rats. In addition to taste, aversions can also be developed to odors. it

For theoretical psychology, CTA is important because, (1)it indicates a "biological preparedness" to associate a response with a particular stimulus; (2) it demonstrates the acquisition of a conditioned response with a single learning trial, (3) it appears to violate the principle of "immediate reinforcement" with the CTA acquired despite long delays between the (CS) and (US).