Luisier Anne-Claude, Petitpierre Geneviève, Bérod Annick Clerc, Richoz Anne-Raphaëlle, Lao Junpeng, Caldara Roberto, Bensafi Moustafa
Research Center in Neurosciences of Lyon, Claude Bernard University Lyon 1, France; Institute of Special Education, University of Fribourg, Switzerland; Brocoli Factory, Sion, Switzerland.
Institute of Special Education, University of Fribourg, Switzerland.
Perception. 2019 Mar;48(3):197-213. doi: 10.1177/0301006619828300. Epub 2019 Feb 13.
The present study examined whether children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and typically developing (TD) children differed in visual perception of food stimuli at both sensorimotor and affective levels. A potential link between visual perception and food neophobia was also investigated. To these aims, 11 children with ASD and 11 TD children were tested. Visual pictures of food were used, and food neophobia was assessed by the parents. Results revealed that children with ASD explored visually longer food stimuli than TD children. Complementary analyses revealed that whereas TD children explored more multiple-item dishes (vs. simple-item dishes), children with ASD explored all the dishes in a similar way. In addition, children with ASD gave more negative appreciation in general. Moreover, hedonic rating was negatively correlated with food neophobia scores in children with ASD, but not in TD children. In sum, we show here that children with ASD have more difficulty than TD children in liking a food when presented visually. Our findings also suggest that a prominent factor that needs to be considered is time management during the food choice process. They also provide new ways of measuring and understanding food neophobia in children with ASD.
本研究考察了自闭症谱系障碍（ASD）儿童和发育正常（TD）儿童在感觉运动和情感层面上对食物刺激的视觉感知是否存在差异。同时还研究了视觉感知与食物新恐惧症之间的潜在联系。为实现这些目标，对11名ASD儿童和11名TD儿童进行了测试。使用了食物的视觉图片，并由家长评估食物新恐惧症。结果显示，ASD儿童对食物刺激的视觉探索时间比TD儿童更长。补充分析表明，TD儿童对多道菜（相对于单道菜）的探索更多，而ASD儿童对所有菜肴的探索方式相似。此外，ASD儿童总体上给出的负面评价更多。而且，享乐评分与ASD儿童的食物新恐惧症得分呈负相关，但与TD儿童无关。总之，我们在此表明，ASD儿童在视觉呈现食物时比TD儿童更难喜欢上一种食物。我们的研究结果还表明，在食物选择过程中需要考虑的一个突出因素是时间管理。它们还为测量和理解ASD儿童的食物新恐惧症提供了新方法。
