Perceptual and imaginary mixtures in chemosensation

D. Algom and W.S. Cain (1991) reported similar interaction patterns for perceived and imaginary mixtures of odorants. However, their experimental design did not allow sensitive statistical testing to demonstrate differences between conditions. Three experiments on 16 mixtures of sucrose-citric acid mixtures yielded significantly different interaction pattern for perceived and imaginary mixtures. Inconsistencies in the degrees of suppression in the imaginary condition suggested that participants did not base their responses on the inspection of a mental image but on incomplete implicit or explicit knowledge of sensory interactions. Participants knew the phenomenon of mixture suppression and knew that its effects were level dependent, but they were unable to predict the exact intensity of a mixture on the basis of the intensities of its unmixed components.