Exploring Age Effects on Children’s Preferences of Package Design: Curvilinearity, Figurativeness, and Complexity

When age meets culture: an investigation of children’s package design preferences

“…To test H1 and H2, four separate logistic regressions were conducted with preference for curved package design as the dependent variable (DV) and independent variables (IVs) including age group (3-6 years vs 7-12 years), culture and age group  culture interaction. As shown in Table II, age group is consistently significant for all four stimuli (p = 0.000 for three stimuli and 0.007 for one stimulus), echoing previous findings that children prefer curved package design more when they get older (Zhang, 2018). However, the culture effect is found to be significant for only two stimuli (p = 0.000 for Stimulus 1 and 0.001 for Stimulus 4), and surprisingly, counter to the prediction of H1, American children showed greater preference for curved package design (Figure 1).…”

“…To test H3 and H4 , generalized linear model (GLM) method was used owing to the mixed nature of the variables, with age as continuous and culture as categorical (McCullagh and Nelder, 1989). The reason we treated age as a continuous variable lies in the finding of a recent study which reveals partial support for an inverted-U relation between children’s preference for figurative package design and age (Zhang, 2018). Accordingly, we first conducted a series of full models for completeness of the tests, with preference for figurative package design as DV and age 2 , age, culture, age 2 × culture and age × culture as IVs.…”

“…Studies in art education and developmental aesthetics find a positive relationship between children's preference for complex stimuli and age (Aitken and Hutt, 1974;Hutt and McCrew, 1969;Thomas, 1966). More recent research confirms this relationship in the case of complex versus simple package design preferences (Zhang, 2018). This positive relationship is supported by research in information processing, which finds that children's ability to detect subtle features of stimuli and to attend to relevant features increases with age (Crick and Dodge, 1994).…”

“…According to Deutman (1988), children's preference for figurative, realistic arts usually lasts until age 10-12 when children begin to realize that artwork need not duplicate visual reality. A recent study finds partial support for an inverted-U relation between children's preference for figurative package design and age (Zhang, 2018). Since people from the Chinese culture tend to think more concretely than their American counterparts, and children are more influenced by culture after they reach the concrete operational stage, thanks to more developed cognitive ability and more extensive social learning (Gardner, 1981(Gardner, , 1990Grusec, 1992;Kindler and Darras, 1997), the effect of culture on children's preference for figurative package design is likely to change with age.…”

“…Although children's preferences in general are affected by their social and cultural environment, such influence through social learning tends to increase when children grow and their cognitive operations progress through interacting with environments and surroundings (Bandura, 1977;Shaffer, 2009). Built on the notion that preferences for curved visual objects can be learned through experience related to the nature of an object's contour (i.e., association of curved shapes with safety and warmth; association of pointed features and sharp angles formed by straight lines with danger and threat) (Bar and Neta, 2008), a recent study empirically revealed that children's preference for curved package design increases with age (Zhang, 2018). In combination of the fact that children's aesthetic development is more influenced by culture when they are at the concrete operational than the pre-operational stage, owing to cognitive development and social learning (Bandura, 1977;Gardner, 1981Gardner, , 1990Kindler and Darras, 1997;Piaget, 1947Piaget, , 1950Toku, 2001), it is expected that the effect of culture on children's preference for curved package design will change with age (i.e., age-culture interaction).…”