Effect of Age and Food Novelty on Food Memory

The influence of age of the consumer and food novelty on incidentally learned food memory was investigated by providing a meal containing novel and familiar target items under the pretense of a study on hunger feelings to 34 young and 36 older participants in France and to 24 young and 20 older participants in Denmark and testing them a day later on recognition of the targets among a set of distractors that were variations of the target made by adding or subtracting taste (sour or sweet) or aroma (orange or red berry flavor). Memory was also tested by asking participants to indicate whether the target and the distractors were equal to or less or more intense than the remembered target in sourness sweetness and aroma. The results showed that when novelty is defined as whether people know or not a given product, it has a strong influence on memory performance, but that age did not, the elderly performing just as well as the young. The change in the distractors was more readily detected with familiar than with novel targets where the participants were still confused by the target itself. Special attention is given to the influence of the incidental learning paradigm on the outcome and to the ways in which it differs from traditional recognition experiments

Diversity in the determinants of food choice: A psychological perspective

Eating, drinking and food choices are among the most frequent human behaviours. Although seemingly simple, they are complex behaviours that are determined by many factors and their interactions. The complexity of the research field stresses the necessity to attack problems in an interdisciplinary way. Unfortunately, truly interdisciplinary approaches are still rare in both sensory and consumer research. Although the number of publications has grown rapidly. there is little methodological progress and Much repetition of easy mono-disciplinary research. Furthermore. and perhaps worst of all, there is very little influx from the fascinating fundamental insights about human behaviour gained over the last two decennia in physiology and psychology. Thus, findings about intuitive reasoning and the clear demonstration of the unconscious nature of most of our decision making do not seem to have touched sensory and consumer research, although they probably play a more important role in food-related behaviour than anywhere else. Instead, people still strongly adhere to theories like the theory of reasoned action and planned behaviour that are based on the idea of rational and conscious decision making and have come under severe criticism on the basis of their low predictive validity, their weak methodology and their strong theoretical bias. Past behaviour, habit and hedonic appreciation are usually better predictors of actual food choice behaviour than psychological constructs like attitudes and intentions. New insights and especially the realisation that much decision making occurs at a non-conscious level, should lead to a rethinking of the methods used in sensory and consumer research. Situational analysis, observational methods and memory and expectation research have the advantage that they leave the interactive integration of the behaviour determinants with the subject, where it belongs, instead of dissecting and reconstructing it via isolated single factor research

Synopsis der bisher in Deutschland aufgefundenen Coleoptera

Volume: 14Start Page: 173End Page: 18

Selection of odorants for memory tests on the basis of familiarity, perceived complexity, pleasantness, similarity and identification

International audienc

Effect of nature of learning and nature of stimuli on performance at a recognition test

International audienc

Effect of nature of learning and nature of stimuli on performance at a recognition test

International audienc

Odeur memory: building a new recognition test to study the effect of odour familiarity and implicit/explicit learning

International audienc

Perceived stimulus complexity and food preference development

The importance of perceived complexity, a 'collative property' as defined by [Berlyne, D. E. (1967). Arousal and reinforcement. In Nebraska symposium on motivation (pp. 1-110). University of Nebraska Press], to the dynamic development of preference was investigated. Eighty-six female and 82 male subjects rated their liking for and various collative properties of seven very similar orange drinks that differed only in perceived complexity as a result of adding small quantities of other flavours. This was done before and after giving each subject extended experience of one of the drinks, each being used equally often for this purpose. As predicted by the theory of [Dember, W. N., & Earl, R. W. (1957). Analysis of exploratory, manipulatory and curiosity behavior. Psychological Review, 64 (2), 91-96] exposure to a stimulus with a slightly higher complexity than an individual subject's optimally preferred level of perceived complexity, caused an upwards shift in that level, whereas exposure to a less complex stimulus had no such effect. Changes in the appreciation of the drinks predicted by the theory were also observed