Cognitive Flexibility Predicts Children’s Levels of Food Neophobia

• In Event: Towards a Holistic Developmental Investigation of Children’s Eating Behaviors

Abstract

Between 3 and 6 years, food neophobia is one of the principal barriers to children’s dietary variety (Dovey et al., 2008). Food neophobia is defined as the disposition to avoid new food and mainly targets fruits and vegetables. This disposition must be understood to help children limit eating habits that prove to be harmful in the long term (Carruth et al., 1998; Lafraire et al., 2016). Current explanations of food neophobia mostly fall into either genetic or environmental influences (Cooke, 2018; Lafraire et al., 2016). However, these two general influences do not consider the cognitive factors implicated in children’s decision to accept or refuse a given food.
Executive functions (EF) have been implicated in food decisions and food-related conditions from pre-adolescence to adulthood. For instance, poorer EF, in particular poorer cognitive flexibility (i.e., seeing things from different perspectives, adaptively adjusting to new demands), is associated with both anorexia (Roberts et al., 2007) and obesity (Verdejo-Garcia et al., 2010). However, relations between EF and food dispositions in early childhood have never been directly assessed. The present study examines whether core EF (i.e., inhibition, working memory, and cognitive flexibility; Miyake et al., 2000) are associated with children’s levels of food neophobia.
The sample in this study consisted of 240 typically developing preschoolers, aged 3-6 years (128 girls; age range = 46.5 to 76.0 months; mean age = 60.6 months; SD = 7.89). Food neophobia was measured by hetero evaluation using the Child Food Rejection Scale (Rioux et al., 2017). Working memory and cognitive flexibility were measured by, respectively, the List Sorting Working Memory Test (Tulsky et al., 2014) and the Dimensional Change Card Sort (Zelazo et al., 2013) from the National Institutes of Health Toolbox Cognition Battery. Inhibition was measured using the nonalphabetic Stroop-like Real Animal Size Test (Catale & Meulemans, 2009). Child gender, age, and vocabulary (assessed through the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test, Dunn & Dunn, 2007) were included as covariates.
Partial pairwise correlations between food neophobia and EF are presented in Table 1. Correlation results indicate that food neophobia and cognitive flexibility are significantly negatively correlated (r = -.301, BF10 > 100). Regression analyses in Model 1 reveal that cognitive flexibility significantly predicts food neophobia (β = -.319, t = -5.01, BF10 > 100; see Table 2). Working memory, inhibition, and vocabulary were not related to children’s food neophobia (p > .05).
Results indicate that cognitive flexibility predicts children’s levels of food neophobia, above and beyond working memory, inhibition, and vocabulary. According to our findings, cognitive flexibility is negatively related to food rejection in young children. Other studies have also found a negative relationship between cognitive flexibility and anorexia/obesity in older individuals (Delgado-Rico et al., 2012; Roberts et al., 2007; Verdejo-García et al., 2010). Thus, it would be worth exploring whether these later conditions may be a consequence of early food rejection underpinned by deficits of cognitive flexibility.

Authors

• Damien Foinant, Université Bourgogne Franche-Comté
  Presenting Author

• Jérémie Lafraire, Institut Paul Bocuse

• Jean-Pierre Thibaut, Université de Bourgogne Franche-Comte