Temporal drivers of liking

Where does liking or disliking come from while eating a product? Is it originated from the first sensation perceived? Is it evolving along food consumption? Usual hedonic liking scale provides an integrated score given posterior to food consumption, making investigation of those questions impossible. Replacing attributes in Temporal Dominance of Sensations (TDS) by the categories of a usual ordinal liking scale (hedonic-TDS) makes it possible to monitor liking changes while eating a product (Sudre et al., FQP, 2012). We used that idea conjointly to TDS with the same consumers in order to not only record the dynamic of liking, but also the sequence of dominant attributes making it possible to derive Temporal Drivers of Liking (TDL). Obviously being able to suggest what attribute should dominate at what period of time during food tasting would be a fascinating tool for product developers. For initiating this methodological research, 6 fresh flavored cheeses were produced as a factorial design: 2 textures x 3 flavors. 64 consumers evaluated the 6 products at each of 4 sessions: i) usual liking score on a 9 point hedonic scale, ii) hedonic-TDS, iii) usual TDS on sensory attributes, iv) a combination of ii) and iii) done simultaneously. Since the experiment is currently running, no results can be given in the abstract. However, the questions which will be answered by further data analysis are: 1. Is there a temporal pattern of liking? 2. How would this pattern correlate with usual liking score, or in other words, what time period matters for liking of these products? 3. Would superimposing the temporal liking curve to the TDS curves highlight possible temporal drivers of liking (attributes peaking at the same time than liking)? 4. Is the innovative task (iv) designed for measuring simultaneously and continuously liking and TDS feasible for consumers? 5. Does it give the same answer then the former superimposition of curves from (ii) and (iii)