Menstrual Phase,History of Smoking,and Taste Discrimination in Young Women

Abstract

University women who were either nonsmokers or who had smoked regularly for at least two years (ns = 7) attempted to discriminate a gustatory stimulus five days before and five days after their menses. The stimuli were presented 3 min. or 5 min. after the introduction of a target stimulus. A statistically significant interaction was found among history of smoking, menstrual phase, and latency for taste comparisons. However, when the shared variance between olfactory and gustatory accuracy was partialled out, the results for smokers suggested significant increases in gustatory thresholds relative to those of nonsmokers regardless of menstrual phase. Smokers also displayed significantly less (eta² = 25%) accuracy for olfactory discrimination than nonsmokers.