The rise of food-related health disorders calls for action. Food behaviors take shape early in life and track well into adulthood, thus, efficient evidence-based interventions promoting healthy food practices early life are key to tackling these challenges. The aim of the F.E.E.D. your mind project is to shed light on the cognitive processes underlying food learning in infancy and provide empirical bases to design such interventions .
The F.E.E.D.your mind project will use complementary approaches from neuroscience and developmental psychology. First, WP1 will investigate the ontogeny and neuro-cognitive bases of the capacity to recognize food objects, testing whether this capacity emerges when infants transition to solid food, guiding their attention to food-relevant inputs, such as social information about edibility. Second, WP2 will examine the social component of food learning processes, once infants are able to recognize food objects, testing whether infants show a negativity bias when learning about food from others, giving more weight to negative than to positive information. Finally, building on WP1 and WP2 results, WP3 will investigate the longitudinal relationship between the processes underlying food recognition and learning in infancy and food behaviors later in childhood.
Project team lead
Camille Rioux
Project supported by
HORIZON-MSCA-2021-PF-01
Project ID: 101064065