Effect of assessors expertise level on efficiency of warm-up for triangle tests

The effect of warm-up on performance for repeated triangle tests is studied according to assessors' expertise level for both triangle test strategy an d the pair of products to compare. Three experiments performed with orange flavored soft drinks show that the effect of warm-up depends on the assesso rs' expertise: (1) naive assessors do not increase their performance with w arm-up; (2) assessors with a moderate practice of both triangle tests and t he pair of products improve their performance with warm-up; (3) assessors w ith a moderate practice of triangle tests, but not familiar with the pair o f products, improve their performance with warm-up too; and (4) assessors h ighly experienced for both triangle tests and products do not improve their performance with warm-up. These results support the idea that the positive effect of warm-up is due to an attentional process: Warm-up seems to help assessors focusing their attention on the dimension on which the two produc ts are actually different and ignoring the other dimensions. Thus, results show that assessors are able to learn the difference between the two produc ts and to learn to focus their attention on this difference at any time. Th ey also suggest that prior knowledge of the triangle test scheme is require d to benefit from warm-up.