6533b85afe1ef96bd12b9d88

RESEARCH PRODUCT

Analysis and modeling of Temporal Dominance of Sensations with stochastic processes

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Temporal Dominance of Sensations (TDS) is a technique to measure temporal perception of food product during tasting. For a panelist, it consists in choosing in a list of attributes which one is dominant at any time. This work aims to model TDS data with a stochastic process and proposes to use semi-Markov processes (SMP), a generalization of Markov chains which allows dominance durations to be modeled by any type of distribution. The model can then be used to compare TDS samples based on likelihood ratio. Because probabilities of transition from one attribute to another one can also depend on time, we propose to model TDS by period and we propose a method to select optimally the number of periods and the frontiers between periods. Graphs built upon the stochastic pattern can be plotted to represent main chronological transitions between attributes. Finally, this work introduces new statistical models based on finite mixtures of semi-Markov processes in order to derive consumer segmentation based on individual differences in temporal perception of a product. The methods are applied to various TDS datasets: chocolates, fresh cheeses and Gouda cheeses. Results show that SMP modeling gives new information about temporal perception compared to classical methods. It particularly emphasizes the existence of several perceptions for a same product in a panel, whereas classical methods only provide a mean panel overview. Furthermore, as far as we know, this work is the first one that considers mixtures of semi-Markov processes.