Associations between emotionality, sensory reactivity and food fussiness in young children

Abstract

The present study investigated associations between children’s sensory reactivity and food fussiness to determine whether these associations remained after controlling for child temperament. Data regarding children’s sensory processing was obtained from 79 mother- child dyads via observation (children were presented with sensory stimuli) and maternal-report. Mothers also completed questionnaires measuring child temperament and food fussiness. Correlation analyses showed that high sensory reactivity in taste, olfactory and tactile sensory modalities were significantly positively associated with food fussiness. Hierarchical regression analyses revealed that taste, olfactory and tactile reactivity explained a significant proportion of variance in food fussiness over and above emotional temperament. There was no significant interaction between emotionality and sensory reactivity in predicting food fussiness across any measured sensory modalities.