Short CommunicationPayoff affects tasters' decisions but it does not affect their sensitivity to basic tastes

- The Double Dissociation Additive Test (DDAT) model was used for taste evaluation.
- An experiment introduced a concurrent manipulation of salt concentration and incentives.
- Salt concentration affected sensitivity and incentives affected response criterion.
- The DDAT showed independence of sensory and decision processes in tasting.
- Separating recording of sensory and decision processes is relevant for tasters training.

An experiment on taste sensory analysis was conducted to explore the effects of manipulating signal intensity and response incentives on sensitivity and decision processes when evaluating basic tastes under high ecological validity conditions. Salt concentration (0.07%, 0.1% or 0.75%) and payoff matrices that were intended to produce lenient, conservative, or neutral response strategies were manipulated in a full factorial between-subjects design. Salt concentration only affected the sensory process (sensory index A') while payoffs only affected the decision process (decision index B'D). The effect of the payoff manipulation on the decision index was symmetrical for lenient and conservative induced response strategies, though less extreme than the values predicted by Signal Detection Theory for an optimal performance under unbalanced payoffs.