Ha Oh-Ryeong, Killian Haley, Bruce Jared M, Lim Seung-Lark, Bruce Amanda S
Department of Psychology, University of Missouri-Kansas City, Kansas City, MO, United States.
Department of Biomedical and Health Informatics, University of Missouri-Kansas City, Kansas City, MO, United States.
Front Psychol. 2018 Jul 27;9:1293. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2018.01293. eCollection 2018.
Television food advertising influences children's food choices. The attribute of "taste" drives children's food choices, and exposure to food commercials can increase the importance of "taste" when children make food decisions. The current pilot study explored whether food advertising literacy training influences children's food choices. In particular, whether the training would change the way children weigh the importance of taste attributes in their food decisions. Thirty-nine children ages 8-13 were recruited. Twenty-three of those children had four sessions of food advertising literacy training (1 week): children watched four videos of food commercials embedded with factual narratives (i.e., building cognitive defenses; e.g., "commercials want to sell products") and evaluative narratives (i.e., changing affective responses toward commercials; e.g., "these foods don't make you happy"). The first and last sessions were held in the laboratory, and the second and third sessions were at home. During the training, children were encouraged to think aloud while watching commercials and provided narratives to encourage active information processing. At baseline and post-training, children made binary eating choices for 60 foods and rated each food item on health and taste. We fitted linear regression models to examine whether taste and health attributes predicted unique variance in each child's food choices. The results showed that taste attributes in children's food choices was significantly decreased after completing the training. This finding suggested that improving food advertising literacy could be helpful for reducing the influence of taste attributes in the food decision-making process. Also, the cognitive literacy training increased children's critical thoughts toward commercials during thinking aloud. These findings suggest that food advertising literacy training was helpful for reducing the importance of "taste" in children's food decisions. In contrast, 16 children in the control condition (i.e., watching four videos of food commercials without narratives in 1 week) did not show any significant change in their food choices. Future research should investigate the utility of food advertising literacy training for the promotion of healthy eating and the prevention of childhood obesity.
电视食品广告会影响儿童的食物选择。“口味”这一属性驱动着儿童的食物选择，接触食品广告会增加“口味”在儿童做出食物决策时的重要性。当前的这项试点研究探讨了食品广告素养培训是否会影响儿童的食物选择。特别是，该培训是否会改变儿童在食物决策中权衡口味属性重要性的方式。招募了39名8至13岁的儿童。其中23名儿童接受了为期四周（每周一次）的食品广告素养培训：孩子们观看了四段嵌入事实性叙述（即建立认知防御；例如，“广告是为了推销产品”）和评价性叙述（即改变对广告的情感反应；例如，“这些食物不会让你开心”）的食品广告视频。第一和最后一次培训在实验室进行，第二和第三次培训在家中进行。在培训过程中，鼓励孩子们在观看广告时大声说出想法，并提供叙述以鼓励积极的信息处理。在基线和培训后，孩子们对60种食物做出二元饮食选择，并对每种食物的健康程度和口味进行评分。我们拟合了线性回归模型，以检验口味和健康属性是否能预测每个孩子食物选择中的独特差异。结果显示，完成培训后，儿童食物选择中的口味属性显著降低。这一发现表明，提高食品广告素养可能有助于减少口味属性在食物决策过程中的影响。此外，认知素养培训增加了孩子们在大声思考时对广告的批判性思维。这些发现表明，食品广告素养培训有助于降低“口味”在儿童食物决策中的重要性。相比之下，16名处于对照条件下的儿童（即一周内观看四段无叙述的食品广告视频）在食物选择上没有表现出任何显著变化。未来的研究应该调查食品广告素养培训在促进健康饮食和预防儿童肥胖方面的效用。
