Learnt reduction in the size of a meal. Measurement of the sensory-gastric inhibition from conditioned satiety

Many experiments on the role of learning in the amount eaten at a distinctive test meal have been claimed to observe "conditioned satiety." None published from outside this author's group has used either the necessary design of the contingencies to be learnt or the measurements that distinguish a sating effect from other loss of interest in food. One experiment has just been published without an adequate design but giving the best evidence yet from another group for the conditioning of sensory-gastric satiety; yet the authors conclude for changes in sensory preference with no learnt gastric involvement in the meal size response. To encourage correct use of the demonstrations in rats, monkeys and people of conditioned satiety and its mechanism, this paper briefly reviews publications that attribute control of meal size to learnt satiety. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.