Development of new child-friendly methods to measure food-evoked emotions holistically

Abstract

Before conducting a child-centered study, the selection of the methodology to use is of special importance since it should be adapted to their cognitive, physical, and social stage of development. On this regard, researchers are force to reconsider the existing methodologies on consumer science, mainly design for adults, or to develop new ones.It is thought that the measure of emotions could contribute the understanding of consumer,s preferences and food choices. Since emotions have a multicomponent character, the application of methodologies that measure each component of the emotion are necessary to reach a holistic perspective. This dissertation aimed to design new child-friendly methodologies appropriate to measure food-evoked emotions holistically. To achieve this goal an emoji-based tool was developed and its applicability in food studies was validated to examine the cognitive inherent of emotion. A combined methodology was also designed to apply automatic facial coding and the measure of skin conductance response (SCR) to disentangle the behavioural and physiological components of emotion. On this regard, the applicability of facial coding on the evaluation of spontaneous facial expressions elicited by food stimuli was examined. After, a methodological approach was developed to overcome some limitations frequently associated with the use of facial coding and SCR and their applicability in a broad range of sensory tasks was tested.