Temporal dominance of sensations (TDS) panel behavior: A preliminary study with chocolate

- Consumers, selected panel and selected and familiarized panel were investigated for TDS analysis.
- The panels provided different descriptions for chocolates with different cocoa content.
- Consumers showed better discrimination of the samples.
- Only select and familiarize the panel was not enough to improve the TDS responses.

This study aimed to evaluate the behavior of different panels with three different profiles: consumers, panel selected based on their good sensory ability, and selected and “familiarized” panel (introduced to the attributes involved in the analysis and conducting three preliminary tests before the final test), for TDS analysis of chocolates with different cocoa contents. TDS curves were analyzed by multivariate ANOVA (MANOVA), followed by the interaction deployment and by PCA. The different panels provided different descriptions for chocolate samples with 35% and 53% cocoa and similar descriptions for the sample with 63% cocoa. Moreover, higher dominance rates were observed in the consumer results. Through MANOVA and PCA it was possible to verify that Panel I was able to discriminate the three chocolates, while the selected panel and the selected and familiarized panel only discriminated chocolate with 35% cocoa from the others. Furthermore, we found that the consumers group spent less time to elect the first sensation and used more attributes to describe the chocolate with 35% cocoa. This indicated that the selection protocol associated with only two sessions to introduce the panelists to TDS procedures and temporality notion, and the familiarization with the TDS sensations protocol used in this study followed by three preliminary TDS tests were not sufficient to improve the TDS response regarding the consumer evaluation.