Measuring child healthy-meal schemas with a pretend-play meal construction task / Kristen Harrison.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Harrison, Kristen, author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Children--Nutrition--Psychological aspects--Research--Case studies.

Children.

Cognition in children--Research--Methodology--Case studies.

Cognition in children.

Physical Description:

1 online resource

Place of Publication:

London : SAGE Publications Ltd, 2026.

Summary:

This case study concerns research that took place with 247 children at 18 preschools in 3 U.S. counties in a Midwestern U.S. state. The mission was to measure young children’s developing cognitive schemas about healthy meals. A novel pretend-play task called the Placemat Protocol was developed to gather data reflecting 4- to 6-year-old children’s perceptions of healthy meals by way of the food models they chose when assembling pretend “preferred” and “healthy” meals. This approach presented three advantages over traditional language-based measures. First, allowing children to assemble pretend meals by choosing from a variety of realistic food models minimized reliance on child vocabulary to obtain valid information about children’s schemas. Second, different food models could be substitued to reflect ethnic or regional dietary traditions, making the protocol culturally adaptable. Third, using food models instead of real foods standardized the appearance and portion size of the foods and eliminated the risks associated with real foods. The food models were marked with weight and volume information that was used to estimate the nutritional content of assembled meals with data from a national nutrition database. Analyses showed that “healthy” meals had fewer estimated calories, less fat, less sugar, less salt, and more fiber than “preferred” meals, even for children with lower vocabulary scores. The Placemat Protocol is a case study exemplifying how a pretend-play method can be used to access children’s domain-specific schemas without reliance on expressive language for validity.

Notes:

Description based on XML content.

ISBN:

9781036250461

OCLC:

1594889451

Publisher Number:

T302441