Abstract Two studies examine how social object histories from collaborative experiences influenced North American children ( N = 160, 5–10 years) thinking about the value of digital objects (48% male/51% female; 51% White/24% Black/11% Asian). With forced‐choice judgments, Study 1 found (moderate–large effects) that children viewed digital and physical objects with social histories as more special than objects without such histories. On a 10‐point scale, Study 2 found (large effects) that children rated digital objects with positive social histories as more special than objects with negative ones. Overall, the studies found that children's tendencies to use object history to understand object value extends into digital contexts. They also reveal how an unexplored kind of history—social history—affects judgments.
Can brief messages about health influence children’s consumption of identical foods? Across a series of studies, we manipulated children’s consumption of identical foods (fruit sauces) by pairing those foods with brief messages about each food’s health status. What initially appeared to be a preference for foods described as healthy among 5–6-year-old children (Studies 1–2) actually reflected a preference for alternatives to foods described as unhealthy (Studies 3–5), including comparison foods that were described with negative or neutral content. Although the two foods on each trial were identical, children consistently ate more of the alternative to a food described as unhealthy. Similar effects were observed among 8–9-year-old children (Study 6). These results demonstrate that children’s eating behavior is affected by messages they receive from other people, including messages about health. Further, these studies reveal basic psychological mechanisms that contribute to children’s choices among foods, which could lead to effective interventions in the food domain.
When infants begin to eat solid foods (recommended at around 6 months of age), parents have a huge variety of choices in terms of what foods to offer. The present studies examine parents' judgments about foods for infants. Participants included parents recruited from Prolific (n = 99), who were shown descriptions of foods offered to infants (including familiar and unfamiliar foods at 6-, 9-, and 12-months) and a set of control foods eaten by adults. Participants rated each food based on how appropriate they thought it was for an infant and how much they personally wanted to eat the food. Parents rated foods as more appropriate for infants if they were familiar (vs. unfamiliar) and offered to younger infants (6- vs. 12-month-olds, or infant foods vs. adult foods), but demonstrated the opposite pattern when considering whether they wanted to eat each food. Participants' own food pickiness was related to their judgments about what they would eat, but not whether foods were appropriate for infants. Parents' judgments of individual foods were inversely related: The more appropriate they rated each food for an infant, the less they were interested in eating that food. These findings are discussed in terms of potential barriers to engaging in social modeling (i.e., parents demonstrating eating and liking the foods they offer to their infants).
Although children frequently engage in creative activities (in which they make foods and objects by hand), the development and scope of children's thinking about handmade items is largely unexplored. In the present studies, we examined whether 4- to 12-year-old children at a local children's museum (54% girls, 46% boys; 51% White, 11% Asian/Asian American, 10% more than 1 group, 4% Latinx, 3% Black/African American, 18% did not report race/ethnicity) would expect other people to prefer handmade over factory-made items, including foods and nonfoods. In Experiments 1 (n = 124) and 2 (n = 122), participants expected a child character to prefer items the character made themselves and items made by the character's parent or a local person. However, this expectation did not persist at all costs: When considering imperfect handmade items in Experiment 3 (n = 122), children demonstrated a handmade preference when considering nonfoods made by a parent but demonstrated a factory-made preference when considering foods made by a parent. Children's explanations were associated with their choices: When children's explanations referred to emotions or relationships, they were more likely to select handmade items. When children referred to item features, they were more likely to select factory-made items. Across studies, we observed persistent age and gender effects: Children's handmade preference increased with child age and girls demonstrated a more robust handmade preference than boys. These findings highlight children's developing and nuanced reasoning about object value. At an early age, children consider who made an object as a contributor to its value. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).
A rehydratable dry-film plating method for coliforms in foods, the 3M Petrifilm Rapid Coliform Count plate method, was compared with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration's Bacteriological Analytical Manual method for nondairy foods and the American Public Health Association's Standard Methods for the Examination of Dairy Products (SMEDP) method for dairy foods. Six food types, vanilla ice cream, cheddar cheese, fresh refrigerated uncooked pasta, wheat flour, prepared frozen macaroni and cheese, and frozen hash browns, were analyzed for coliforms by 11 collaborating laboratories. For each food product tested, the collaborators received 8 blind samples consisting of a control sample and 3 levels of inoculated sample, each in duplicate. The mean log counts for the methods were comparable. The repeatability and reproducibility variances of the Petrifilm Rapid Coliform Count method at 14 and 24 h were not significantly different from those of the standard methods.
Three experiments investigated 5- to 6-year-old monolingual English-speaking American children’s sociolinguistic evaluations of others based on their accent (native, foreign) and social actions (nice, mean, neutral). In Experiment 1, children expressed social preferences for native-accented English speakers over foreign-accented speakers, and they judged the native-accented speakers to be “American.” In Experiments 2 and 3, the accented speakers were depicted as being nicer than the relatively meaner native speakers. Children’s social preferences and judgments of others’ personalities varied as a function of behavior; in particular, children disliked individuals who committed negative social actions. In contrast, children’s judgments of nationality hinged exclusively on accent; across all conditions, children evaluated native-accented English speakers to be “American,” regardless of whether they were nice or mean. These findings contribute to an understanding of the nature of children’s reasoning about language as a social category and have implications for future research investigating children’s thinking about language as a marker of national group identity.
Understanding disease transmission is a complex problem highlighted by the COVID-19 pandemic. These studies test whether 3- to 6-year-old children in the United States use information about social interactions to predict disease transmission. Before and during COVID-19, children predicted illness would spread through close interactions. Older children outperformed younger children, with no associations between task performance and pandemic experience. Children did not predict that being hungry or tired would similarly spread through close interactions. Participants include 196 3—6-year-olds (53% girls, 47% boys; 68% White, 9% Black, 7% Asian, 6% Hispanic or Latinx), with medium-sized effects (d=0.6, ηp2=0.3). These findings suggest that thinking about social interaction supports young children’s predictions about illness, with noted limitations regarding children’s real-world avoidance of disease-spreading behaviors.
Abstract Nettle et al. describe increasing food intake (relative to energy expenditure) in response to food insecurity as a key contributor to obesity. I argue that a variety of implicit psychological mechanisms underlie this process to contribute to weight gain. The biobehavioral pathways and the social nature of food selection discussed here are importantly related to food selection and obesity.
