Group and individual gustatory reaction times and Piéron's law.

Simple reaction times (SRT) to eight substances belonging to the four classical taste families were evaluated. The same eight subjects participated in all experiments. The functional relationship between SRT and concentration for group and for individual data were examined. Equations presented by different authors to describe RT data are discussed. The Piéron function [(SRT - t0) = betaI-alpha] best fits the gustatory data collected in the present experiments. These results, together with others taken from previous studies, show that the exponent of salt and acid taste functions is lower than 1.0 with a relatively short t0. Sweet and bitter exponents were equal t0 or higher than 1, with a larger t0. Individual performances correlated with taste families for salt and acid. However, the limited samples of some solutions sets some limits to the interpretation of RT to taste substances.