Do trained assessors generalize their knowledge to new stimuli?

Previous work showed that trained assessors are better at discriminating and describing familiar chemico-sensorial stimuli than novices. In this study, we evaluated whether this superiority holds true for new stimuli. We first trained a group of subjects to characterize beer flavors over a two year period. After training was accomplished, we compared the performance of these trained assessors with the performance of novice subjects for discrimination and matching tasks. The tasks were performed using both well-learned and new beers. Trained assessors outperformed novices in the discrimination task for learned beers but not for new beers. But on the matching task, trained assessors outperformed novices for both learned and new beers. These results suggest that perceptual learning is harder to generalize than verbal learning. (C) 2003 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.