Comparative sensory trial demonstrates equivalent sensitivity between two-out-of-five and triangle tests in trained panelists, indicating higher statistical power without taste adaptation.
Our study refutes a long‐standing assumption that multiple tastings in the two‐out‐of‐five test induce sensory adaptation, consequently diminishing participants' discrimination ability compared to a triangle test. Our objectives were to compare the number of tastings, the degree of taste adaptation, and the sensitivity of these two tests. A total of 14 trained participants evaluated two concentrations of sugar in iced tea using each test. We counted the number of times each person tasted each sample, calculated the proportion of discriminators for each of the two tests, and measured adaptation to sweet, sour, and bitter tastes. Participants tasted more times during the two‐out‐of‐five tests than the triangle tests; however, both tests produced similar proportions of discriminators (0.40 vs. 0.41) and similar adaptation. The much smaller chance probability of the two‐out‐of‐five test compared to the triangle test, and thus its much greater statistical power, was not outweighed by any negative impact of multiple tasting.
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Kang et al. (2026) studied this question.
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