Trends in Food Science & Technology 38 (2014) 104e112
Review
Temporal
Dominance of
Sensations: A review
Rossella Di Monaco*,
Chengcheng Su, Paolo Masi and
Silvana Cavella
Department of Agricultural and Food Science,
University of Naples, Via Universit

a 100, 80055
Portici, NA, Italy (Tel.: D39 081 2539456; fax: D39
081 7754942; e-mail: rossella.dimonaco@unina.it)
Food and beverages undergo a series of physical and chemical
reactions during mastication, salivation and so on, moreover
the perception of aroma, taste, flavor and texture changes
too. Thus, conventional static sensory methods, which require
judges to average their dynamic sensations and give only a sin-
gle point evaluation, are bound to miss some significant prod-
uct information. To overcome this drawback, different
dynamic sensory methods have been developed and refined.
This review focuses on Temporal Dominance of Sensations
(TDS), a relatively new dynamic sensory methodology.
Introduction
Conventional descriptive sensory techniques, such as Sen-
sory Profiling, require judges to time-average or integrate
their changing perceived sensations to make only single
point evaluations (Cliff & Heymann, 1993), thus
providing an overall impression of attribute maximum in-
tensity or averaged intensity instead of the time course of
a sensation. Although in many cases, this average mea-
surement might suffice to tackle problems, some vital in-
formation is bound to be missed because the process of
tasting a food or drinking a beverage is not static. The
savoring of a food does not begin when it arrives in our
mouth; it often lasts after food removal; it is influenced
by the pattern of taste stimulation and it takes time for
us to perceive its maximum intensity (Halpern, 1991).
* Corresponding author.
0924-2244/$ - see front matter 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.tifs.2014.04.007
Likewise, it was pointed out by Piggott (1994) and
Dijksterhuis (1996) that elaborated processes involved in
food consumption, including mastication, salivation,
tongue movement, swallowing and so on modified the
perception of both the intensity and the quality of aroma,
taste, flavor and texture from one moment to another.
Therefore, to truly understand how products are perceived
by consumers during the course of consumption and
consequently, how their hedonic reaction is affected, tem-
poral sensory methodologies should be adopted (Lawless
& Heymann, 2010, chap. 8; Piggott, 2000).
Different temporal methodologies have been devel-
oped over the last few decades, some of them have
largely been applied in literature, such as Time Intensity
and more recently Temporal Dominance of Sensations,
whereas others have been less used, such as Progressive
Profile (Jack, Piggott, & Paterson, 1994); Sequential
Profiling (Methven et al. 2010) and Dual Attribute
Time Intensity (Duizer, Bloom, & Findlay, 1996;
Duizer, Bloom, & Findlay, 1997). This review focuses
on Temporal Dominance of Sensations (TDS), a rela-
tively new dynamic sensory methodology. TDS will be
briefly compared to other static and dynamic descriptive
sensory techniques.
Temporal Dominance of Sensations
Temporal Dominance of Sensations (TDS) was devel-
oped at the Centre Europeen des Sciences du Go^ ut in
the LIRIS lab in 1999 and was first presented at the Pang-
born Symposium by Pineau, Cordelle, and Schlich (2003).
TDS studies the sequence of dominant sensations of a prod-
uct during a certain time period (Pineau et al., 2009). More
precisely, it consists of identifying and sometimes rating the
intensity of sensations perceived as dominant until the
perception ends. Subjects have to select a new dominant
attribute whenever they perceive a change in dominant sen-
sations. Dominant has been defined as the sensation that
captures ones attention, the most striking perception, or the
new sensation that pops up at a given time but not neces-
sarily the most intense sensation (Labbe, Schlich, Pineau,
Gilbert, & Martin, 2009; Pineau et al., 2009), or as a
stand-alone definition (Le Reverend, Hidrio, Fernandes,
& Aubry, 2008; Meillon, Urbano, & Schlich, 2009). TDS
judges do not require lengthy training and moreover several
attributes can be evaluated simultaneously by TDS.
 R. Di Monaco et al. / Trends in Food Science & Technology 38 (2014) 104e112
Test procedure
Different tests ranging from the triangular test, taste
recognition, odor identification to intensity ranking are
used to select subjects. The optimum number of judges
have not been studied or verified to date. Good practice
could be to use rather more judges than that of conventional
descriptive methods (Pineau et al. 2012). Qualified judges
then undergo several training sessions, during which they
are usually first introduced to the notion of the temporality
of sensations, then to the definition of dominance of sensa-
tions. Since, as Meyners (2010) stated, dominance and in-
tensity are two different but complementary concepts, in
TDS it is useful to use judges unaware of classical descrip-
tive methods.
It is worth mentioning that judges need to be highly
motivated and dedicated to TDS measurement since they
are required to continuously make a choice among several
attributes to determine the sequence of dominant sensations
and in most cases their intensities as well (Ng et al., 2012;
Pineau et al., 2012). However, intensity ranking was found
not to be really necessary (Pineau et al., 2012) and evidence
shows that dominance rates alone can provide important
temporal information (Dinnella, Masi, Naes, &
Monteleone, 2013; Paulsen, Ns, Ueland, Rukke, &
Hersleth, 2013). Meillon et al. (2009) suggested that judges
should not be over-trained, in order to avoid individual
typed-response which is a tendency for subjects to quote
descriptors in the same order for all products. In TDS meth-
odology the training should be more oriented to sample
description in order to improve the list of dominant attri-
butes (Pineau et al. 2012). Thus, if the judges are not
familiar with sample category, evaluation processes, and
above all, the definition of the attributes, considerable
time will still need to be invested in training. Consensus
must be reached among judges on the definition of each
attribute.
A selected list of attributes describing examined prod-
ucts is generated during training. For attribute selection,
different methods have been adopted by different re-
searchers. The most common way of building an attribute
list is to firstly provide judges samples with different
perceived in-mouth properties to define the product scale,
asking them to taste the samples and note down all the
perceived sensations; secondly collect and compare the
answers of assessors under the guidance of a panel leader
in group discussions, during which hedonic, quantitative
and irrelevant descriptors are eliminated, and synonyms
are combined; finally, only the most frequently cited attri-
butes are selected and kept for further TDS analysis
(Albert, Salvador, Schlich, & Fiszman, 2012; Lenfant,
Loret, Pineau, Hartmann, & Martin, 2009; Meillon
et al., 2009, 2010; Paulsen et al., 2013). Additionally,
attribute lists can be developed on the basis of initial sen-
sory profiling (Bruzzone, Ares, & Gimenez, 2013; Labbe
et al. 2009; Ng et al. 2012; Teillet, Schlich, Urbano,
Cordelle, & Guichard, 2010; Sokolowsky & Fischer,
105
2012), which enables meaningful product descriptions to
be obtained from TDS data. Goupil de Bouille, Pineau,
Meyners, Martin, and Schlich (2010) analyzing 15 TDS
studies, found that judges behave differently with respect
to how many and to which attributes they use, when the
attributes list contains more than six. The same re-
searchers also found that judges use on average about 4
attributes to describe a single sample and that attribute or-
der did not affect the attribute chosen. Pineau and co-
workers proposed to keep the number of attributes to
around 8 to 10 based on the results of 21 TDS studies
(Pineau et al., 2012).
Tasting protocol must be agreed on and standardized by
the judges, particularly when the tasting mode, such as in-
mouth manipulation, could bring about obvious different
sensory perceptions (Su, 2013).
Once the judges have been trained in products sensory
evaluation, no more than three sessions are required for
them to become familiar with TDS procedure (Meillon
et al., 2009).
Judges start the evaluation while putting samples into
their mouths. Once the chronometer starts, they identify
the sensations perceived as dominant and sometimes rate
their intensities if required while performing the tasting
protocol. The evaluation ends when judges can no longer
perceive sensations, and stop the chronometer (Meillon
et al., 2009). Otherwise, data acquisition stops automati-
cally after a certain period depending on the products and
testing protocols. If TDS data acquisition is realized with
the use of FIZZ software, all the selected attributes are
shown on the same computer screen with their correspond-
ing buttons or unstructured scales ranging from weak to
strong when attribute intensities need to be assessed
alike. Biosystemes was the first historical partner to
develop TDS application but nowadays, Fizz is not the
only software that runs TDS evaluations, in fact most of
the sensory software provides a TDS module (EyeQuestion,
Compusense, TimeSens.).
It must be pointed out that a chosen attribute is regis-
tered as dominant until another attribute is chosen. Dur-
ing a testing, judges are free to choose the same
attribute for several times as long as they think it is
dominant, but they have to take into account that only
one attribute can be selected at each time. Conversely,
they might not use all the attributes provided (Pineau
et al., 2009). Based on 21 TDS studies from the TDS
base, Pineau et al. (2012) found that judges tend to
choose a relatively constant number of attributes per
evaluation (average 4) regardless of the total number
of attributes on the list. To limit the preferential use of
the first attributes listed, descriptors must be presented
randomly across the panel but remain the same for a
given judge during the entire evaluation, thus facilitating
him/her in the learning of the terms and scoring inten-
sities during an evaluation (Meillon et al., 2009;
Pineau et al., 2012).
106 R. Di Monaco et al. / Trends in Food Science & Technology 38 (2014) 104e112

Analysis and interpretation of results

Usually the data collected during TDS are: name of the
dominant attribute; the time when an attribute is selected as
dominant; the duration of the dominance can be calculated
a posteriori and the intensity scored for each dominant attri-
bute is recorded only for protocols with intensity scales
(Labbe et al., 2009).
TDS curves show the dominance rates of attributes
against time for each sample (Bruzzone et al., 2013;
Meillon et al., 2010). Whether the TDS curves are normal-
ized or not, the Y-axis always stands for the dominance rate,
which is the percentage of selections of an attribute as
dominant at a particular time point (Ng et al., 2012). It is
calculated by dividing the number of citations of an attri-
bute (all replications) by the number of runs
(judge  replication). These dominance rates can be seen
as a reflection of consensus among judges and therefore a
measurement of panel performance (Pineau et al., 2009).
More precisely, since only one attribute can be selected
as dominant at any one time by any one judge, the sum
of the dominance rates of all the attributes at each point
of time for that judge is 1. The higher the dominance rate
of the attribute, the better the agreement among judges
(Albert et al., 2012). It is important to bear in mind that
TDS curves rely solely on the selection of an attribute as
dominant or not, no data concerning attribute intensity is
shown.
Fig. 1a gives an example of a TDS curve based on a
study on polenta sticks. To assist the interpretation of
TDS results, two lines representing the chance level and
Fig. 1. a) TDS curves of all the evaluated attributes for fried polenta
significance level are drawn on TDS curves (Fig. 1b (Di stick; b) TDS curves of dominant attributes for fried polenta stick.
Monaco et al., in preparation)).
Chance level is defined as follows (1):
when they are above significance level (Labbe et al.,
P0 1=p 1 2009; Lenfant et al., 2009; de Loubens et al., 2011;
Pineau et al., 2009; Teillet et al., 2010).
where p is the number of attributes, standing for the domi- In some cases, for example, when the investigation is
nance rate that an attribute can obtain by chance (Pineau focusing on what happens just before swallowing, TDS
et al., 2009). Significance level, calculated from the confi- curves are preferably standardized; this leads to a better
dence interval of a binomial proportion based on a normal display of perception evolution and greater consensus
approximation, indicates the minimum value that must be across the whole panel (Lenfant et al., 2009; Pineau,
reached for the dominance rate to be considered as signif- Lenfant, Hartmann, & Martin, 2008). The duration of
icantly higher than the chance level (Albert et al., 2012; mastication -from the moment when the sample is placed
Deleris et al., 2011; Labbe et al., 2009; Meillon et al., into judges mouths, to the moment when the sample is
2010; Pineau et al., 2009). It is calculated as follows (2): ready to be swallowed e could be measured before each
formal session by using a chronometer. However, in other
Ps P0 1:645P0 1  P0 =n 2
1=2
situations, such as when in-mouth duration time is impor-
tant, non-standardized data are preferable (Meyners,
where Ps is the lowest significant proportion value 2010). Therefore, the choice between standardization and
(a 0.05) at any point of time for a TDS curve, and n is non-standardization depends on the objective of the study.
the number of runs (judges  replicates). Although applicable to liquid products (Ng et al., 2012),
Different studies have different panel level definition standardization of TDS curves is difficult to apply to
criteria. For instance, Albert et al. (2012) considers TDS studies on lingering (Pineau et al., 2008). Furthermore, af-
curves consistent at panel level when they rise from be- ter standardization, the X-axis of the TDS curve does not
tween chance and significance levels to above the latter, represent true consumption time but the mastication period
while others maintain that TDS curves are consistent from first scoring to swallowing (Lenfant et al., 2009), or,
 R. Di Monaco et al. / Trends in Food Science & Technology 38 (2014) 104e112
from when judges click the start button to the moment they
click the stop button or when recording stops automatically
(Ng et al., 2012). In addition to TDS curves, TDS differ-
ence curves are commonly plotted for sample comparisons
(Albert et al., 2012; Bruzzone et al., 2013; Lenfant et al.,
2009; Meillon et al., 2009; Pineau et al., 2009). The curves
are drawn by subtracting the dominance rates of two sam-
ples for each attribute at each point of time. The difference
in dominance rate is only plotted when it is considered
significantly different from 0 according to a classical test
of comparison of binomial proportions (Pineau et al.,
2009). Fig. 2 illustrates the comparison between two coffee
based frozen creams using TDS difference curves (Su,
2013).
The total dominance of an attribute is also used for TDS
data interpretation. During an evaluation, this parameter is
defined as the area between significant level and TDS
curves. It takes into account both the dominance rate and
duration of an attribute. Despite its common application
in TI (Cliff & Heymann, 1993), it was not applied to
TDS analysis until Bruzzone et al. (2013) conducted a
research on yoghurt texture perception, in which a sample
map based on attribute dominance was generated to better
study the influence of different yoghurt formulations on
texture characteristics. Although on one hand this proce-
dure is a quick and effective way to interpret representa-
tions of both samples and attributes, on the other hand it
could be considered as just another tool to convey the
same results of a classical sensory profiling, since any tem-
poral aspect of the data is removed if the areas under the
curves are used. Again, the use of PCA with only five vari-
ables, as reported by Bruzzone et al. (2013), is worthy of
consideration.
In a study on cereals, Lenfant et al. (2009) averaged the
dominance rates of each attribute for all products at a given
Fig. 2. TDS difference curves of two different coffee based frozen
creams.
107
time and obtained an additional curve called the average
TDS curve. Used in combination with a representation of
TDS curves for attributes for all products, the average
TDS curve gave information on the general sequence of
dominant sensations during the consumption of a certain
product category. Later on, Deleris and fellow workers
(2011) extracted mean duration D (the cumulative duration
for which a given attribute was selected) and mean time T
(the first time point at which a given attribute was selected)
for all judges in order to understand the influence of swal-
lowing on aroma perception of alcoholic beverages. Thus, it
can be seen that various parameters can be extracted from
raw TDS data and recombined to fulfill different research
targets.
In contrast to the simple process of data extraction, the
statistical analysis of TDS data is troublesome. In most
research, TDS data analysis is restricted to the description
of TDS curves, in such cases comparisons between
different samples can be made by the qualitative evaluation
of the curves (Lawless & Heymann, 2010, chap. 8). There
were no valid statistical inference tests until 2010, when
Meyners and Pineau, having found two important limita-
tions of the test for binomial proportions proposed by
Pineau et al. (2009) proposed an approach based on
randomization tests. Firstly, it relies on a sample approxi-
mation involving the normal distribution that cannot be
applied to the TDS data based on small samples and small
elicitation probabilities; secondly but no less important, the
test assumes independent samples, even though in the TDS
experiments usually each subject evaluates all the samples.
In the new method, TDS data were unfolded into matrices
so as to calculate the Euclidean distance, thus allowing the
comparison of global and paired samples (Meyners &
Pineau, 2010), in addition to the assessment of panel agree-
ment (Meyners, 2011). Even though, according to the au-
thors, this approach, when applied to real data, gave good
results, the main limitations are the long computing time
and the dependency on the randomization used. The authors
also proposed a graphical method to show the many p-
values derived from it.
To assess panel and assessor performance, Pineau and
fellow workers proposed the use of aggregated frequency
values of attribute dominance in a given number of time pe-
riods rather than at all time points collected (Pineau,
Neville, & Lepage, 2011). Although it involves the applica-
tion of a simple ANOVA model to TDS data, making it
easy to implement and fast to run, this approach has not
been used in any other published research to date, due to
a lack of validity (Dinnella et al., 2013).
To enable the evaluation of product differences,
Dinnella et al. (2013) introduced the investigation of
the residuals of ANOVA models by using histograms,
qeq and scatter plots, which validated the proposed
testing procedure. The procedures of computation and
calculation of frequency values are as follows: first, the
TDS curve of each sample must be inspected visually
108 R. Di Monaco et al. / Trends in Food Science & Technology 38 (2014) 104e112
and compared in order to split the entire evaluation
period into smaller equaled intervals based on the results
as proposed by Pineau et al., (2011); second, the domi-
nant attributes for each sample must be summarized in
a table of dominant attributeesample pairs; thus, the fre-
quency value for each dominant attributeesample pair
from each judge in each repetition in each interval are
computed. Then, the summarized frequency value for
each dominant attribute in all corresponding samples
for each judge in each interval based on the whole gener-
ated set of aggregated frequency values must be calcu-
lated. A judge whose summarized frequency values
equal zero, indicating that he never uses this dominant
attribute to describe any corresponding samples, is ex-
empted from further analysis. In this way, judges whose
descriptive vocabularies are not in consensus with the
rest of the panel are excluded. Then, the frequency values
generated in all replicates by each remaining judge for
each dominant attributeesample pair in each time inter-
val must be independently analyzed by using one-way
ANOVA with sample as the factor. The sample difference
distinguishing capacity of each judge is then assessed by
the generated p values. Finally, the pre-processed data
must be submitted to a regular mixed model ANOVA
with subject, sample and interaction effects, with the
latter two effects considered as random. To check the val-
idity of the ANOVA model, the distributions of the resid-
uals are further analyzed by histograms, qeq plots and
plots of estimated values vs. the residuals.
At present, the procedure proposed by Dinnella et al.
(2013) has not been applied in other published papers.
Probably the reason being that although apparently simple
and useful at first glance, in practice there are many limita-
tions and unresolved issues.
The first important contradiction of this data analysis
is the condensation of temporal dominance data into
just 3 or 4 intervals. This is conceptually wrong, at this
point it would be more appropriate to use another method
such as a quick flash profiling, or a repeated CATA on
these few attributes - giving all applicable attributes,
not just the one that is dominant, and thus more informa-
tion. Another important limitation is the choice of the in-
tervals e how does this affect results and interpretation?
It is suggested that this is done by close inspections of
the curves e how to avoid selection bias and self-
fulfilling prophecies? Besides, by considering, for each
attribute, only some samples and/or some subjects for
the analysis is contradictory to the fact that subjects
have to select one dominant attribute at a time and within
a fixed list. The proposal to exclude judges from the
panel based on their evaluation is absolutely in contradic-
tion with the suggestions of Meillon et al. (2009) early
stated on panel training. Moreover, this proposal is not
able to cope with the whole dataset, but only to some spe-
cific areas for which ANOVA assumptions are not
broken.
Application of TDS and comparison with other
methods
TDS has already been used for various products with
different texture properties, ranging from liquid to semi-
solid and solid food items (Table 1).
In spite of its incapability of discriminating the tastes of
water (Teillet et al. 2010), TDS proved its efficiency in dis-
tinguishing other product categories, such as wines
differing in bitterness and other attributes (Sokolowsky &
Fischer, 2012), yoghurt with different texture properties re-
sulting from different formulations (Bruzzone et al., 2013)
and so on. Additionally, TDS enabled the evaluation of a
sequence of sensations generated by the oral trajectory dur-
ing mastication of breakfast cereals (Lenfant et al., 2009),
fish sticks (Albert et al., 2012) and biscuits with different
fiber and fat contents (Laguna, Varela, Salvador, &
Fiszman, 2013). In a recent study of Varela, Pintor, and
Fiszman (2014) TDS highlighted the effect of hydrocol-
loids in changing the dynamic perception of ice cream
texture attributes.
Studies on gels (Labbe et al., 2009), dealcoholized wines
(Meillon et al., 2009) and blackberry squashes (Ng et al.,
2012) revealed that TDS can even provide information on
sensations perceived after food consumption, such as a
refreshing sensation, which suggests its promising applica-
tion in the investigation of food experience or emotion (Ng
et al., 2012).
TDS and TI methods, both of which are dynamic tests,
have been compared in some studies. In 2008, Le Reverend
et al. characterized the specific sensory properties of six hot
beverage products using both TDS and TI. By using three
different statistical approaches, they found that TI and
TDS produced similar information in terms of differences
between products, attributes, and evolution over time
despite TDS being quicker in obtaining information. How-
ever, TI was found to be more suitable for the determina-
tion of the kinetics of one specific attribute whereas TDS
could be used to illustrate product perception as a function
of time. Besides, extra information concerning the
sequence of sensations and multidimensionality, where
interaction between attributes is required, can be provided
by TDS.
The same conclusions were drawn by V
azquez-Ara
ujo,
Parker, and Woods (2013). They compared TI, TDS and
drinking profile in order to evaluate the flavor of beers.
The drinking profile method (DP) allows the intensity of
several attributes during different sips to be recorded,
with each sip being spaced several seconds apart. Jack
et al. (1994) first used this procedure, called progressive
profiling. Both TI and TDS highlighted significant temporal
differences among the samples, whereas DP gave the same
information found from descriptive analysis, without
revealing the flavor evolution after five sips.
TDS and TI were also compared by Pineau et al. (2009)
by studying five different liquid dairy products. Similar
conclusions were drawn, TDS and TI globally provided
 R. Di Monaco et al. / Trends in Food Science & Technology 38 (2014) 104e112 109

Table 1. Published TDS studies.a

Food category Number of judges Other methodb Author Year

Liquid Hot beverages 12 TI Le Reverend et al. 2008
Liquid dairy products 16 TI Pineau et al. 2009
Dealcoholized red wines 16 SP Meillon et al. 2009
Red wines 8 e Meillon et al. 2010
Water 16 SP Teillet et al. 2010
Flavored vodka 10 e Deleris et al. 2011
White wines 18 QDA, TI Sokolowsky & Fischer 2012
Blackcurrant squashes 11 QDA Ng. et al. 2012
Espresso coffee 16 HS, NS Barron et al. 2012
Coffee 13 e Dinnella et al. 2013
Beer 12 TI, DP V
azquez-Ara
ujo et al. 2013
Semi-solid Gels 12 SP Labbe et al. 2009
Gelled candies 12 SP Saint-Eve et al. 2011
Cheese 16 e de Loubens et al. 2011
Yoghurt 10 QDA Bruzzone et al. 2013
Ice cream 14 e Varela et al. 2014
Solid Wheat flakes 25 e Lenfant et al. 2009
Fish sticks 9 KASP Albert et al. 2012
Biscuits 13 e Laguna et al. 2013
Nuts 40 e Hutchings et al. 2014
Food combination EVOO with vegetables 13 SP Dinnella et al. 2012
Salmon-sauce 9 QDA Paulsen et al. 2013
Notes.
a
A broad search for papers related to the TDS, from the 2003 until the 2013, using major databases (i.e., Web of Knowledge, SCOPUS) was
conducted.
b
TI e Time Intensity; SP e Sensory Profiling; QDA e Quantitative Descriptive Analysis; HS e Headspace; NS e Nose-space; DP e Drinking
Profile; KASP e Key Attribute Sensory Profiling.

compliant and coherent results, but in general they are not
designed for the same needs. TI focuses on the evolution of
the intensity of one attribute at a time, thus being more suit-
able when the intensity of a specific attribute needs to be
followed carefully over time. When several attributes
have to be compared over time, TDS seems better suited
because the process of picking dominant attribute is some-
what of a comparison process. Furthermore, TDS is a less
time-consuming and multi-attribute temporal method
which highlights the interactions among attributes
(Deleris et al., 2011).
Apart from this, Sokolowsky and Fischer research on
white wines (2012) shows that TI tends to exaggerate the
bitter intensity due to the focus on one taste only and
halo-dumping effects, which is prevented in TDS analysis.
In fact, the evaluation of the bitterness of wine during clas-
sical descriptive analysis (DA) did not reflect the maximum
intensity of the same taste as evaluated by TI. Results from
DA were higher compared to those from TDS, meaning that
the globally perceived intensity of bitterness appears to be
more affected by the periods of dominance.
Despite the different psychological mechanisms
involved in evaluating global (focused on one single rating)
or temporal (choice of one attribute from a list over time)
sensations, good agreement between conventional descrip-
tive profiling data and TDS curves was demonstrated in
previous studies on products with different texture proper-
ties (white wines (Sokolowsky & Fischer, 2012), fish sticks
(Albert et al., 2012)), especially on semi-solid products,
including gels (Labbe et al., 2009), gelled candies (Saint-
Eve et al., 2011) and yoghurt (Bruzzone et al., 2013).
Nevertheless, the qualitative and quantitative informa-
tion provided by static and dynamic techniques are not al-
ways the same. By studying 9 different gels using sensory
profiling and TDS, Labbe et al. (2009) found that the dy-
namic perception differs from the immediate perception
of products with long lasting multi-sensory perception.
Similarly, by analyzing the impact of two Italian extra-
virgin olive oils on the perceived sensory profiles of pureed
beans and tomatoes, Dinnella, Masi, Zoboli, and
Monteleone (2012) found that the importance of a sensation
during food consumption is not necessarily the same as that
indicated by intensity ratings from static sensory profiles. In
other words, sensations with a moderate intensity or even
less can also be dominant in the dynamic profile; unripe
fruit flavor is an example of an unexpected attribute in an
extra-virgin Tuscan oil, which was perceived as dominant
even when perceived at low intensity level.
Compared to static sensory techniques, TDS has obvious
advantages thanks to its temporal component. In the study
of partially dealcoholized red wines (Meillon et al.,
2009), TDS generates double the number of attributes
110 R. Di Monaco et al. / Trends in Food Science & Technology 38 (2014) 104e112
that discriminate tested samples and enables the recognition
of temporal differences between wines. Similarly, studies
on flavored gels (Labbe et al., 2009) and blackberry
squashes (Ng et al., 2012) confirm the capacity of TDS to
estimate qualitative changes of dominant attributes during
and after food consumption, which cannot be obtained
with conventional sensory profile. Moreover, TDS helps
to better understand the dynamics of phenomena involved
in texture-flavor interactions (Saint-Eve et al., 2011) and
food component interactions (Dinnella et al., 2012), and
is therefore more suitable for the interpretation of consumer
responses and complex sensation perceptions. Last, but not
least, TDS method is more rapid and the fact that attributes
are not evaluated independently could be in some cases an
advantage (Saint-Eve et al., 2011; Teillet et al. 2010).
Despite all the merits that TDS possesses, it only enables
the evaluation of dominant sensations (Ng et al., 2012;
Saint-Eve et al., 2011) and cannot therefore replace con-
ventional sensory profiling in the context of product devel-
opment today, as conventional sensory profiling allows
evaluation of a larger number of attributes. However,
TDS can complement static descriptive analysis data since
the latter only yields single point information about a
perception, which actually changes constantly during food
consumption due to complex interactions among food com-
ponents, mastication style, initial food structure, etc.
(Dinnella et al., 2012; Ng et al., 2012; Sokolowsky &
Fischer, 2012).
As pointed out by Meyners (2010), TDS is conceptually
different from any method focused on perception intensity
such as TI or sensory profiling, therefore it cannot be
considered as a replacement, but simply as a method useful
to analyze and interpret another sensory dimension.
To summarize, TDS and conventional sensory profiling
are designed to satisfy different needs and are generally
recommended to be used together as complementary tech-
niques to obtain a more rounded product profile.
Future developments
As a newly developed temporal methodology, TDS still
suffers some gaps in knowledge and further research needs
to be conducted in order to clarify the following aspects:
(1) How the dominance is defined and interpreted by the
judges may have an impact on TDS results, and,
accordingly to Meyners (2010), further research is
needed to understand how the dominance is conceptu-
alized by both judges and consumers.
(2) The optimum number of judges and replications for
TDS analysis have not been studied or verified to
date. Common practice uses slightly more judges than
that of conventional methods, and three replicates are
almost always conducted in order to have no fewer
than 30 evaluations per product.
(3) Although some researchers include intensity ranking in
TDS analysis, it has been shown that dominance rates
alone are enough to obtain important information.
Furthermore, several unpublished studies indicate a
delay in the peaks of dominance curves when intensity
is included. Taking into consideration both this and the
difficulty of assessing dominance and intensity simulta-
neously, until now buttons have been used instead of in-
tensity scales to omit intensity evaluation in some
research studies.
(4) As indicated by some studies, judges are able to use
different attribute types (taste, texture and aroma) in a
single evaluation. Nevertheless, the exact influence of
listing different sensory properties in the same list re-
mains unknown.
(5) Since TDS data can involve different attributes, in
different orders and with different times of elicitations,
the assessment of the repeatability at individual level is
problematical. Although computing frequency values
proves to be a useful approach of performance evalua-
tion, especially when several sensations are perceived
as dominant during the same time interval, further in-
vestigations are still required to improve the
assessment.
(6) Though it is suggested that using TDS together with in-
nose measurement of aroma concentration could make a
difference in establishing the relationship between aroma
perception and aroma release, it remains hard to relate sen-
sory and instrumental data due to the variety and
complexity of the phenomena involved. In-depth research
needs to be carried out to validate this connection.
Conclusion
Despite the fact that Temporal Dominance of Sensations
has never been applied to studies of food appearance or
orthonasal-odor properties, Temporal Dominance of Sensa-
tions has proven to be less time-consuming than time-
intensity and conventional sensory profiling. In addition,
it provides supplementary information on the sequence of
sensations and qualitative changes perceived during the
food consumption process that are not measurable with
TI or conventional sensory analysis.
The efficiency of TDS in distinguishing weak-sensory-
difference samples and describing the evolution of different
sensory perceptions (texture, taste and aroma) during and
after food consumption have been evidenced by studies
on complex products that arouse dynamic sensory.
Furthermore, TDS is believed to be more appropriate to
explain consumer responses than static descriptive analysis
due to its temporal element. In addition, the dynamic infor-
mation from TDS may contribute to the understanding of
liking drivers (Varela et al. 2014). Besides, it is noteworthy
that even though liking was a temporal phenomena, only
few researchers attempted its measurement through a tem-
poral procedure (Sudre, Pineau, Loret, & Martin, 2012).
It is not difficult to say that TDS is a very useful sensory
methodology when taking into account all its advantages
 R. Di Monaco et al. / Trends in Food Science & Technology 38 (2014) 104e112
and the ever increasing need to acquire temporal sensory
information on food products.
However, it is necessary to investigate it together with
more kinds of product to explore the application scope of
TDS. And attention still needs to be paid when TDS is
used for the following reasons:
(1) It is not easy for judges to keep in mind all the attri-
butes simultaneously during an evaluation and a non-
negligible part of the panel can no longer handle the
whole list when the number of attributes exceeds 10.
As a result, it is recommended to include a maximum
of 10 attributes in a list to reduce the impact of different
judge behavior towards the list whereas such a limit
does not exist in regular descriptive analysis. In a
word, the selection or discarding of attributes could
be a real difficulty when using TDS.
(2) Since only a maximum of 10 attributes can be
analyzed in one evaluation, so TDS has to be com-
bined with other sensory methods in order to get a
comprehensive and complete picture of the products
being analyzed.
(3) Since the primary information collected in TDS anal-
ysis is the choice of a certain attribute as dominant,
and only this information will be used later it is difficult
to define the attribute sequences that judges should
reproduce.
(4) Although no training in intensity scoring is required,
judges should receive a sound training on the recogni-
tion and definition of different sensory qualities. This
is because even though a consensus on the attributes
used to differentiate products can be reached, judges
may use them differently, which will eventually bring
differences to the results.
(5) The attribute order across the entire panel should be
balanced so as to reduce the potential attribute position
bias, i.e., attributes at the top of the list tend to be
selected earlier than those at the bottom.
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