Food as an eye‐catcher. An eye‐tracking study on Children's attention to healthy and unhealthy food presentations as well as non‐edible objects in audiovisual media

Abstract

BACKGROUND Food presentations within media content are often made responsible for todays' obesity epidemic. This assessment is based on the assumption that food presentations create cue reactivity, which in turn affects the amount of food intake. OBJECTIVE This study investigates children's implicit reactions (cue reactivity) toward healthy, unhealthy, and non‐ediblel objects. METHODS We conducted an experimental eye‐tracking study comparing children's cue reactivity assessed with visual attention toward healthy and unhealthy food presentations, as well as non‐edible objects. We controlled for the role of children's hunger, body mass index (BMI), and age. RESULTS Results indicated no difference between healthy and unhealthy food presentations, yet food generally aroused more visual attention in children compared to non‐edible objects. Explicit memory for the embedded foods or objects was mediated through visual attention. However, unhealthy food presentations also directly affected children's explicit memory. CONCLUSIONS Compared to non‐edible objects, food presentations seem to be eye‐catchers that immediately grab children's attention and they are also able to maintain this attention. Yet, for unhealthy food presentations, memory seems to be less dependent on visual attention. That is, compared to healthy products or non‐edible objects, unhealthy food presentations do not require the same amount of visual attention in order to be remembered.

A “Forbidden Fruit Effect”: An Eye-Tracking Study on Children’s Visual Attention to Food Marketing

“…Moreover, to calculate dwell time and pupil diameter changes, first of all, the areas of interests (AOIs) were defined. Mandarins and fruit gums within the media-stimulus were defined as the AOIs [32]. We calculated the mean dwell time for all AOIs for each picture, and we computed the dwell time means for each condition [25].…”

“…Only a few studies we are aware of have tested the effects of healthy versus unhealthy foods on visual attention [23,[31][32][33]. First, Graham and colleagues [23] measured visual attention of overweight and normal weight women toward unhealthy sweet, unhealthy savory, and healthy foods.…”

“…This study presented that children show higher visual attention to unhealthy compared to healthy food cues. However, Naderer and colleagues [32] tested with a between-subject design of how children react to healthy, unhealthy, or non-edible products. In this case, the authors did not find any effects on dwell time when comparing the two food conditions.…”

“…Overall, this study contributes to this important research field in investigating children's dwell time and pupil dilation in reaction to an unhealthy versus a healthy product. Studies exploring the effects on children did not measure pupil dilation [31][32][33]. However, this important measurement could shed light on children's emotional reactions toward different food cues [28].…”

“…Moreover, as stated in the REFCAM [28], individual susceptibility factors such as food restrictions at home [30] or the BMI [46] are crucial. However, studies with children did not take these factors into account [31][32][33].…”