ASSOCIATION OF PERCEPTUAL FEEL AND GENERAL DESCRIPTORS WITH FOOD CATEGORIES BY 8–11 YEAR OLDS AND ADULTS

Abstract

ABSTRACTThis study assessed the association of perceptual feeling and general descriptors with food categories by Grade 3 (8–9 year olds), Grade 5 (10–11 year olds), and adults. Subjects judged whether 38 descriptors were appropriate for Bread and Cereals, Dairy Products, Fruit, Meat, Sweets, and Vegetables. The number of associations increased cumulatively with age. Three developmental trends were evident in this study in combination with an earlier one by Oram (1998). First, word‐category associations increased with age for words already in the food vocabulary. Second, words were associated with specific food categories before the superordinate label ‘Food'. Third, a few word‐category associations decreased from school‐age to adulthood. The first two trends may reflect increases with age in word comprehension, focussing on less salient attributes, and food category size. The third trend may be attributable to an agerelated shift in food typicality within individual categories. The present study also has several sensory evaluation implications. It shows an easy and quick way to estimate the vocabulary of children for food products, and the results of this study can be used to generate descriptor lists for 8–11 year olds.