Lumeng Julie C, Cardinal Tiffany M, Jankowski Meghan, Kaciroti Niko, Gelman Susan A
Center for Human Growth and Development, University of Michigan, 300 NIB, 10th Floor, Ann Arbor, MI 48109-0406, USA.
Appetite. 2008 Sep;51(2):302-10. doi: 10.1016/j.appet.2008.03.010. Epub 2008 Mar 30.
We hypothesized that children's reliance on adults' testimony regarding food choices would diminish when adults were shown to be unreliable informants by expressing liking for foods the children disliked. In three studies, 3-6-year-old children observed an adult expressing liking for food and non-food items that were either the same as or opposite the child's stated hedonic assessments. Even after having observed an adult express liking for stimuli the children disliked, children still selected the item which the adult identified as hedonically positive. Children were more likely to select the stimulus identified as hedonically positive by the adult when the stimulus was food (as opposed to non-food), and when the adult's hedonic assessment was provided as an absolute ("I think this is yummy.") as opposed to a comparative statement ("I like this one better."). The results imply that an adult's identification of a food as hedonically positive serves as an important guide to children's food selection, even when children recognize that adults have very different hedonic assessments of foods from themselves. Providing information to children that a food is palatable in absolute terms also appears to shape children's food selection more powerfully than providing the information in comparative terms.
我们假设，当通过表达对孩子们不喜欢的食物的喜爱来表明成年人是不可靠的信息提供者时，孩子们在食物选择上对成年人证词的依赖会减少。在三项研究中，3至6岁的儿童观察到一名成年人对与孩子所表达的享乐评价相同或相反的食物和非食物物品表达喜爱。即使在观察到一名成年人对孩子们不喜欢的刺激物表达喜爱之后，孩子们仍然选择了成年人认定为享乐上积极的物品。当刺激物是食物（而非非食物）时，以及当成年人的享乐评价是以绝对的表述（“我觉得这个很好吃。”）而非比较性的表述（“我更喜欢这个。”）给出时，孩子们更有可能选择被成年人认定为享乐上积极的刺激物。结果表明，即使孩子们认识到成年人对食物的享乐评价与他们自己非常不同，成年人将一种食物认定为享乐上积极也会成为孩子们食物选择的重要指南。以绝对的方式向孩子们提供一种食物可口的信息，似乎也比以比较的方式提供信息更有力地影响孩子们的食物选择。
