THE DEVELOPMENT OF DISGUST AND OTHER TYPES OF FOOD REJECTIONS IN CHILDREN

This is a first study on the development of children\u27s conceptions of food. It uses, as a frame of reference, a psychological taxonomy of adult classification of foods and nonfoods and is concerned particularly with rejections of substances as foods. Prior work indicates that rejections can be based on dislike of a taste (distaste), fear of harm (danger), or the dislike of the idea of what a substance is or where it comes from. These latter ideational rejections can be subdivided into those that have an affective component (disgust) and those that do not (inappropriate). Fundamental to distinguishing disgust from the other categories is the notion of contamination (that is, trace amounts of disgusting substances can render liked substances unacceptable by the knowledge of their presence). Twenty nine children (3 1/2 to 12 years) and their thirteen major caretakers answered questions about illustrated stories in which a small piece of a substance from each of the various categories fell into and was removed from a liked beverage. The results indicated that even the youngest subjects were ascertained to have the distaste category. Although all subjects rejected poison as being harmful, the youngest subjects associated bad taste with harm. The concept of danger as a pure reason (a good tasting dangerous substance) developed somewhat later. Ideational rejections occurred only in the oldest children and adults. Although all subjects rejected the prototypical disgust and inappropriate substances, younger subjects did so for non-ideational reasons (e.g., taste, harm). Pure associational disgust (an ideational rejection based on an association of what it is and not on particle contamination, for example, drinking from a dog bowl) occurred about the same times as the ideational rejection, but was present in only approximately half those subjects who used ideational reasons. Contamination was not present in the youngest subjects (the liked beverage was acceptable after the grasshopper was removed by a spoon). With increasing age, there was an increasing differentiation in the range of negativity among the substances. These differences appear to be related to the child\u27s knowledge of diffusion and the particulateness of matter