Studying Children's Eating at Home: Using Synchronous Videoconference Sessions to Adapt to COVID-19 and Beyond

Children's evaluations of culturally diverse lunchbox foods

Previous research indicates that children make ingroup-outgroup judgments based on notions of food conventionality and that ethnic minority children have been teased or bullied for bringing non-conventional foods to school. This series of three studies experimentally investigated U.S. school-age children's evaluations of culturally diverse lunchbox foods. Study 1 examined an online sample of children aged 5 to 12 years and their evaluations of foods from four cultures (mainstream American, Chinese, Indian, and Mexican) on the taste, smell, and messiness of the food, the appropriateness of bringing the food to school, and whether "cool kids" eat the food. Compared with the mainstream American lunchbox, children rated the Chinese, Indian, and Mexican lunchboxes as less tasty, more messy, and less likely that cool kids would bring those foods to school. In Studies 2 and 3, we examined children's behavioral choices in a hypothetical cafeteria. In both studies, we found that the match between children's own lunch preferences and what was displayed in the mainstream American lunchbox was the only predictor of children's choice to sit at the table with the American lunchbox. Individual variables (e.g., child age, food pickiness) and contextual variables (e.g., neighborhood diversity) did not predict children's table choices. This research highlights children's understanding of familiarity and conventionality of foods and the social consequences of their behavioral choices.

Conceptual Considerations and Methodological Challenges to Measuring Food Acceptance During Infancy

PURPOSE OF REVIEW

The purpose of this review is to (1) present a conceptual definition of infant food acceptance, (2) explore methodological challenges to measuring different components of food acceptance, and (3) provide recommendations for future research on food acceptance during infancy.

RECENT FINDINGS

Infant food acceptance includes separate but overlapping components: wanting, liking, and consumption. Recent evidence suggests that although these components are often correlated, there is variability in the sensitivity of these measures to detect differences in infants' responses to target foods. To date, consumption and caregiver perceptions of liking have been the primary outcome measures of interest in studies of infant food acceptance. More diverse and precise measures across the three components of infant food acceptance are needed to address a wider scope of research questions, which would in turn strengthen the interpretability and translational potential of research in this area.

A survey on the challenges, limitations, and opportunities of online testing of infants and young children during the COVID-19 pandemic: using our experiences to improve future practices

In developmental psychology, the widespread adoption of new methods for testing children does not typically occur over a matter of months. Yet, the COVID-19 pandemic and its associated social distancing requirements created a sudden need among many research groups to use a new method with which they had little or no experience: online testing. Here, we report results from a survey of 159 researchers detailing their early experiences with online testing. The survey approach allowed us to create a general picture of the challenges, limitations, and opportunities of online research, and it identified aspects of the methods that have the potential to impact interpretations of findings. We use the survey results to present considerations to improve online research practices.

Use of Telemedicine Healthcare Systems in Children and Adolescents with Chronic Disease or in Transition Stages of Life: Consensus Document of the Italian Society of Telemedicine (SIT), of the Italian Society of Preventive and Social Pediatrics (SIPPS), of the Italian Society of Pediatric Primary Care (SICuPP), of the Italian Federation of Pediatric Doctors (FIMP) and of the Syndicate of Family Pediatrician Doctors (SIMPeF)

Telemedicine is considered an excellent tool to support the daily and traditional practice of the health profession, especially when referring to the care and management of chronic patients. In a panorama in which chronic pathologies with childhood onset are constantly increasing and the improvement of treatments has allowed survival for them into adulthood, telemedicine and remote assistance are today considered effective and convenient solutions both for the chronic patient, who thus receives personalized and timely assistance, and for the doctors, who reduce the need for direct intervention, hospitalizations and consequent management costs. This Consensus document, written by the main Italian Scientific Societies involved in the use of telemedicine in pediatrics, has the objectives to propose an organizational model based on the relationships between the actors who participate in the provision of a telemedicine service aimed at minors with chronic pathologies, identifying specific project links between the areas of telemedicine in the developmental age from the first 1000 days of life to the age adult. The future scenario will have to be able to integrate digital innovation in order to offer the best care to patients and citizens. It will have to be able to provide the involvement of patients from the very beginning of the design of any care pathway, increasing where possible the proximity of the health service to citizens.

Online Assessment of Motor, Cognitive, and Communicative Achievements in 4-Month-Old Infants

Remote methods for data collection allow us to quickly collect large amounts of data, offering several advantages as compared to in-lab administration. We investigated the applicability of an online assessment of motor, cognitive, and communicative development in 4-month-old infants based on several items of the Bayley Scales of Infant Development, 3rd edition (BSID-III). We chose a subset of items which were representative of the typical developmental achievements at 4 months of age and that we could administer online with the help of the infant’s caregiver using materials which were easily available at home. Results showed that, in a sample of infants tested live (N = 18), the raw scores of the BSID-III were significantly correlated with the raw scores of a subset of items corresponding to those administered to a sample of infants tested online (N = 53). Moreover, for the “online” participants, the raw scores of the online assessment did not significantly differ from the corresponding scores of the “live” participants. These findings suggest that the online assessment was to some extent comparable to the live administration of the same items, thus representing a viable opportunity to remotely evaluate infant development when in-person assessment is not possible.

Does social modeling increase infants' willingness to accept unfamiliar foods?

Despite a rich knowledge base about infants' social learning and studies observing social referencing in other species in food contexts, we know surprisingly little about social learning about food among human infants. This gap in the literature is particularly surprising considering that feeding unfamiliar foods to infants is a very common experience as infants begin to eat solid foods. The present study examines whether parental social modeling influences infants' willingness to accept unfamiliar foods. In two Zoom sessions, parents will be asked to feed unfamiliar foods to their 6- to 24-month-old infants (different unfamiliar foods in each session). In both sessions, infants' food acceptance and rejection will be measured. In the first session, parents will be asked to do what they would typically do; spontaneous social modeling will be recorded. In the second session, parents will be instructed to model eating the unfamiliar food. We will examine associations between infants' willingness to eat unfamiliar foods, parent social modeling, and extant parent and infant characteristics.

Remote testing: Sensory test during Covid-19 pandemic and beyond

Restrictions adopted by many countries in 2020 due to Covid-19 pandemic had severe consequences on the management of sensory and consumer testing that strengthened the tendency to move data collection out of the laboratory. Remote sensory testing, organized at the assessor’s home or workplace and carried out under the live online supervision of the panel leader, represents a trade-off between adequate control and the convenience of conducting testing out of the lab. The Italian Sensory Science Society developed the “Remote sensory testing” research project aimed at testing the effectiveness and validity of the sensory tests conducted remotely through a comparison with evaluations in a classical laboratory setting. Guidelines were developed to assist panel leaders in setting up and controlling the evaluation sessions in remote testing conditions. Different methods were considered: triangle and tetrad tests, Descriptive Analysis and Temporal Dominance of Sensations tests, all of which involved trained panels, and Check-All-That-Apply and hedonic tests with consumers. Remote sensory testing provided similar results to the lab testing in all the cases, with the exception of the tetrad test run at work. Findings suggest that remote sensory testing, if conducted in strict compliance with specifically developed sensory protocols, is a promising alternative to laboratory tests that can be applied with both trained assessors and consumers even beyond the global pandemic.