Topographical differences in sweetness sensitivity in the peripheral gustatory system of adults and children

Testing taste sensitivity and aversion in very young children: development of a procedure

“…Thus, the threshold values in our study exceed the values found earlier with adults by at least two steps on our scale. Such a low sensitivity to sucrose would be in line with a study by Stein et al (1994) who found similar age differences for somewhat older children. We cannot draw any strong conclusions regarding possible age differences in taste sensitivity, however, as no adults were tested with our procedure.…”

Analysis of taste mixtures by adults and children

“…The possibility that differences exist between the gustatory system of adults and children is supported by the ®ndings that children are poorer at discriminating between taste stimuli (Kimmel, Sigman-Grant, & Guinard, 1994), males are more sensitive to sucrose in small regions of the anterior tongue (Stein, Laing, & Hutchinson, 1994), and less sensitive in whole mouth tests of sensitivity to the four common tastes (James et al, 1997). However, the similar response functions of adults and children produced for sucrose in different food and beverage stimuli (James et al, 1999) suggest that at least one characteristic of the system is mature.…”

The Receptor Basis of Sweet Taste in Mammals

“…However, some differences in peripheral anatomy , such as the density of fungiform papillae on the tongue (and presumably the number of functioning taste receptors), have been shown to influence sensitivity to stimuli of multiple taste qualities (e.g., sweet, bitter) (Duffy 2007 ;Miller and Reedy 1990 ;Stein et al 1994) . In contrast, humans can differ strongly in the degree to which they prefer sweeteners (Reed and McDaniel 2006) .…”