The magic water test. An affective paired comparison approach to evaluate taste sensitivity in pre-schoolers

Abstract

Children in pre-school age present a limited cognitive development, a restricted vocabulary and a short attention span, which do not allow conducting classical taste sensitivity measures as developed for adults. The aim of this study was to develop and validate an age-appropriate protocol for sensitivity testing of the five basic tastes with pre-schoolers. One hundred and forty children aged 3–4 years (mean age 46.3 months, SD 3.4) performed a paired comparison task consisting of discriminating water from ‘‘magic water” by relying on their affect. In order to accommodate the age group, the task was gamified and did not require verbal responses. Sweet (sucrose, ranging from 0.94 to 4.32 g/l), sour (citric acid monohy- drate, 0.20–0.38 g/l), umami (monosodium glutamate, 0.17–0.49 g/l), salty (sodium chloride, 0.34– 0.98 g/l), and bitter (quinine hydrochloride dihydrate, 0.0014–0.0038 g/l) water dilutions were tested at four levels. Subsets of about 20 children per taste participated in retest sessions. Individual sensitivity scores were derived in two manners, following the experimenter’s success criterion (water with taste is classified as magic) and the child’s criterion for ‘‘magic water” (children’s individual magic-labelling strategies). Results show that the protocol was highly engaging, that the children performed the task consistently, and that the children’s performances were not dependent on cognitive level differences, thus validating the protocol for this study. On average, the children were clearly more sensitive to sour stimuli than to sweet and bitter stimuli, suggesting that the selected dilutions were not equivalent across tastes. Different sensitivity distributions of the children were obtained across taste modalities and scoring cri- teria. The key elements of an age-appropriate protocol for pre-schoolers are discussed

Do parents form their children’s sweet preference? The role of parents and taste sensitivity on preferences for sweetness in pre-schoolers

“…The task was to discriminate consistently between the two samples within the pair. For the complete protocol and set-up of the sensitivity-testing, see Vennerød et al (2017).…”

The Environmental and Bitter Taste Endophenotype Determinants of Picky Eating in Australian School-Aged Children 7–12 years—A Cross-Sectional Pilot Study Protocol

“…The PROP taste sensitivity test will take approximately 12-15 min per child. It is a safe, simple, non-invasive test to examine individual's perception to bitter taste [14], extensively used in adults and children as young as 3 years of age [39] and been recommended for bitter taste sensitivity screening at an epidemiological level [14,24]. Children will rinse and spit out 7 solutions containing increasing levels of PROP concentrations (ranging from 17-3200 uMol/L) (referred to as PROP taste solutions).…”

Can children use the A‐not a test?

“…Previous research has highlighted that children show a better discrimination ability when analytical methods are framed as hedonic tasks due to their lower cognitive demand (Liem et al, 2004b; Vennerød et al, 2017). For instance, ranking tests and paired comparisons framed as hedonic tasks have been successfully applied with children (Cordelle et al, 2005; Laureati et al, 2016; Léon et al, 1999; Vennerød et al, 2017).…”

“…Previous research has highlighted that children show a better discrimination ability when analytical methods are framed as hedonic tasks due to their lower cognitive demand (Liem et al, 2004b; Vennerød et al, 2017). For instance, ranking tests and paired comparisons framed as hedonic tasks have been successfully applied with children (Cordelle et al, 2005; Laureati et al, 2016; Léon et al, 1999; Vennerød et al, 2017). In addition, Lima et al (2018) has recently reported that school‐age children showed a higher hedonic sensitivity toward sugar reduction than adults despite their lower ability to detect differences in their sensory characteristics using a check‐all‐that‐apply question.…”

“…In this context, the aims of this work were to: (i) evaluate the feasibility of using the A‐not‐A test with school‐aged children, and (ii) compare how the framing of the question (overall differences vs. differences in liking) influences the results. It was hypothesized that children would be able to use the A‐not‐A test to assess both visual and food stimuli and that they would be able to better discriminate samples if the test was framed in terms of overall differences (Liem et al, 2004b; Vennerød et al, 2017).…”