Comparison of two training methods identify beer aromas: 'groups' against 'individual' [French]

摘要

The purpose of this study was to evaluate whether an individual training allowing for the adaptation of aroma concentrations to individual performance level would not lead to better performance than a classical group training. Two training methods were compared. In the first one, subjects worked in group and in the second one, they worked alone in front of an automat. Both methods are based on the two following principles: an active learning (ie. when they made a mistake, subjects were not given the answer immediately but had the possibility to find it by themselves) and an adaptation of aroma concentrations to the subjects' level of performance. In the group condition, the aroma concentrations were chosen in function of the group response whereas in individual condition, they were chosen in function of the individual response. Results show that while both methods were efficient - the performance of individual and group subjects had doubled between the beginning and the end of training - a few differences can be noted. First, during training, subjects in the group condition require lower concentrations than subjects in the individual condition did. Second, during the evaluation tests, subjects in the group condition tend to identify more aromas and to be more confident in their judgement than subjects in the individual condition but also were more prompt to false alarms than the latter. Finally, the most important difference between the two methods is the subject motivation: Subjects in the group condition were more motivated than subjects in the individual condition who found the sessions in front of the automat rather tedious.