Ambientes virtuais e medidas biométricas aplicadas na ciência sensorial e estudos com consumidores

Abstract

A new trend in sensory science has emerged with advances in digital technologies with opportunities to collect new types of responses and in search of a better understanding of the physiological processes that trigger sensory perception. Virtual environments are examples of these promising technologies to simulate more realistic and natural contexts and scenarios, while biometric techniques allow physiological measurements to be obtained. Given the above, the contributions of the present study are: i) to review the psychophysiological fundamentals of virtual and augmented realities, their sensory applications and the impact of familiarization on sensory performance and ii) to evaluate the performance of a sound biometric tool during the chewing of a crispy food to validate it as an alternative acoustic measurement technique and to predict consumers' sensory responses. For this, in the first article, a search was carried out in the Web of Science and Science Direct databases, limited to studies published in the last 5 years and available online. A total of 19 articles were identified in sensory surveys. The findings suggest that the familiarization phase is necessary to minimize the effects of distraction and novelty perceived by the consumer in a first contact with the techniques. Using a context unrelated to the definitive test is effective as long as the core activities of definitive tests are addressed and trained in that context. In the second article, the laryngophone was used to record the acoustic signal during the chewing of five samples of wafer biscuits with variations in the levels of crispness. The acceptance was evaluated in relation to the attributes global aspect, texture and ideal of crispness and the instrumental texture. The average values of the total acoustic signals of each treatment were calibrated in relation to the average of the sensorial and instrumental texture scores, using regression by least squares. The results showed that the total acoustic signal presented a positive linear relationship for the evaluated parameters, being directly proportional to the sensorial responses and inversely to the instrumental response. The laryngophone was able to capture the sound differences between treatments and the acoustic signal reflected a low or high level of crispness of the wafer biscuit. To ensure a good performance and predictive capacity of the models, it was necessary, at least, to collect sensory responses from 60 evaluators. Therefore, the laryngophone and virtual environments are promising tools for sensory science, product development and quality control, allowing industries to strategically position their products in the market while ensuring consumer satisfaction.