Taste perception analysis using a semantic verbal fluency task

Figures & data

Table 1 Demographic data of healthy (N=43) and dysphagic (N=17) subjects

Characteristic	Healthy	Dysphagic
Sample size	43	17
Mean age, years	49.07 (standard deviation, 24.17)	76.88 (standard deviation, 7.14)
Age range, years	19–84	59–87
Mean education, years	12.3 (standard deviation, 1.41)	6.06 (standard deviation, 1.56)
Education range, years	6–16	6–16
Percentage female, out of total subjects	60	41.2

Table 2 Body mass index data for healthy (N=43) and dysphagic (N=17) subjects

Body mass index, kg/m^2	Frequency		Percentage
	Healthy	Dysphagic	Healthy	Dysphagic
Low (≤18.49)	7	2	16.3	11.7
Normal (18.5–24.99)	14	8	32.6	47.1
Overweight (25–29.99)	18	6	41.8	35.3
Obese (≥30)	4	1	9.3	5.9
Total	43	17	100.0	100.0

Table 3 Quantitative summary of errors for the four verbal fluency taste categories (sweet, salty, sour, and bitter) for the group of 43 healthy subjects

Taste category	Number of errors/total number of produced responses	Percentage errors out of total number of produced responses	Egocentric (personal opinion)	Miscellaneous	Repetitions
Sweet	8/443	1.84	5	1	2
Salty	2/310	0.64	2	–	–
Sour	5/231	0.94	3	2	–
Bitter	26/126	20.63	20	6	–

Table 4 Breakdown and list of errors (egocentric, miscellaneous, and repetition error types) for the four verbal fluency taste categories (sweet, salty, sour, and bitter) for the group of 43 healthy subjects

Taste category	Error type
	Egocentric errors	Miscellaneous errors	Repetitions
Sweet	Peas, milk, sauce with pasta, sour cream, baked potatoes	Crisps	Creams, ice-cream
Salty	Sweat, beer
Sour	Spoon sweets, spinach-rice, leeks with rice (local dish)	Salty, soda water
Bitter	Medicines, soap, iron medicine, aspirin, pills, syrups-medicine, antibiotics, coughing syrups, poison, lemon, mayonnaise, mustard, detergents, bitter words, cigarette	Pepper, anything that does not have sugar, cream cheese, pomegranate, bread

Table 5 Comparison of the empirical cumulative distribution functions for the combined group of 60 subjects

Taste category and body mass index category	Kolmogorov–Smirnov#			Shapiro–Wilk
	Statistic	Degree of freedom	Significance	Statistic	Degree of freedom	Significance
Sweet
Underweight	0.198	9	0.200*	0.929	9	0.476
Normal	0.110	22	0.200*	0.962	22	0.533
Overweight	0.141	24	0.200*	0.939	24	0.156
Obese	0.282	5	0.200*	0.897	5	0.391
Salty
Underweight	0.274	9	0.050	0.830	9	0.044
Normal	0.157	22	0.172	0.924	22	0.091
Overweight	0.174	24	0.058	0.940	24	0.162
Obese	0.229	5	0.200*	0.867	5	0.254
Sour
Underweight	0.201	9	0.200*	0.950	9	0.685
Normal	0.205	22	0.017	0.903	22	0.033
Overweight	0.183	24	0.036	0.912	24	0.039
Obese	0.372	5	0.022	0.828	5	0.135
Bitter
Underweight	0.153	9	0.200*	0.930	9	0.481
Normal	0.201	22	0.221	0.871	22	0.008
Overweight	0.243	24	0.201	0.889	24	0.013
Obese	0.273	5	0.200*	0.852	5	0.201

Notes: Test of normality for four perception category tastes (sweet, salty, sour, and bitter) and four different body mass indexes (underweight, normal, overweight, and obese).

* This is a lower bound of the true significance

# Lilliefors Significance Correction.

Figure 1 Breakdown of mean number of responses into the four body mass index groups (underweight, normal, overweight, and obese) for each of the four verbal fluency taste categories (sweet, salty, sour, and bitter) and for the combined group of 60 subjects (healthy, 43; dysphagic, 17).