Date of Award

Summer 1986

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Science (MS)

Department

Psychology

Program/Concentration

Psychology

Committee Director

Gary L. Allen

Committee Member

Kathleen C. Kirasic

Committee Member

Raymond H. Kirby

Call Number for Print

Special Collections LD4331.P65P37

Abstract

Four training techniques were employed to investigate the effects of increasing knowledge of beer flavor on novices' ability to differentiate among beers on the basis of taste. These techniques included (a) learning definitions of beer flavor terminology (Verbal Condition); (b) having additional experience with taste sensations (Taste Condition); (c) having a combination of the verbal and taste techniques (Verbal/Taste Condition); and (d) no training (Control Condition). After preliminary testing, 40 subjects (10 per training condition) were selected to participate in pre- and post-training tasks in which they rated similarity between beers, between beers and flavor-descriptive adjectives, and between flavor-descriptive adjectives.

Each Subject's performance was compared to that of an expert brewmeister by means of multidimensional scaling analyses. Results indicated that although all participants unexpectedly revealed an overall decrease in congruence to the expert after training (including the Control condition), subjects in the Taste Condition showed significant effects of training in their ability to match identical beer flavors. The observed decrease in overall congruence was apparently the result of subjects' inability to assimilate new semantic information along with new perceptual experiences into a coherent cognitive structure. Training that included verbal information led to greater confusion in relating terms to flavors than was the case before training. Further research should focus on increased training of novices as well as training of discriminators.

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DOI

10.25777/r67f-2j67

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