Eating for Pleasure or Profit: The Effect of Incentives on Children's Enjoyment of Vegetables - Research Paper Example

In Cooke et al. , the researchers investigate the relationship between external, non-food rewards and liking of a moderately disliked vegetable, in addition to studying the short-term and long-term effects of those rewards. To this end, the authors distinguish between acquisition, which refers to the short-term acceptance of the disliked vegetable in exchange for a reward, and maintenance, which refers to the long-term acceptance of the disliked vegetable even after the exchange for a reward does not apply. Another explicit purpose of the study was to compare mere exposure (exposure without a reward) to a no-treatment control condition. The role that this control condition played in the experiment was to provide a baseline for the analysis of child responses when external rewards were presented. The authors were also interested several factors that contribute to the discrepancy between the tendency for rewards to increase acceptance in field studies on one hand, but the tendency of rewards to decrease liking in laboratory studies. Implicit in the design of their study, the researchers attempted to study the type of reward used, the initial liking, and the intended outcome of the study and whether those factors play a role. To accomplish these tasks, the researchers used a cluster-randomized experimental design that arranged over 400 children into four conditions: an exposure plus tangible non-food reward, an exposure plus social reward, an exposure alone, and a no-treatment control group. Over 12 days, the children were presented daily with the exposure to a vegetable that children find objectionable in taste. Then, the children from the respective conditions were either given an additional reward or, for those in the control condition, left alone. The results measured from these tests of taste were collected at a one-month and a three-month point after the 12 exposures in order to examine the effects of the exposures on acquisition and maintenance of the taste. This research design was intended to either accept or reject the hypothesis that external rewards have a significant effect on changing children’s tastes for vegetables. The children in the study fell in between the range of 4 and 6 years old and were randomly assigned to their conditions. To test each of the children individually, the researchers used a vegetable that the child rated in the middle of five other vegetables so that there was the potential of learning to enjoy the taste of that middle vegetable. During the intervention period, children were given praise as a reward (in the social reward condition), a sticker (in the tangible non-food condition), or minimal social interaction (in the no exposure condition). Through all of this testing, the researchers discovered that liking for the vegetable increased in the three intervention conditions as compared to the control condition, in which children were not exposed to the vegetable. Within these results, there was no significant difference in liking between each of the exposure conditions (that is, social rewards did not increase liking more than non-food tangible rewards). In terms of timing after the initial study, each of the interventions maintained their difference at a significant level for one month, during the acquisition phase. However, children who were rewarded with external rewards maintained their liking for three months or more during the maintenance phase. Likewise, during this maintenance phase, there was no significant difference between the social reward and the non-food tangible reward condition in terms of who continued to like the vegetables more. Meanwhile, the effect of the no reward exposure because insignificant by that three month point. In other words, external rewards do not produce negative effects and may actually be useful to promote healthful eating in children. This is consistent with the authors’ hypothesis that external rewards can serve as an incentive for children to develop a habituation with eating vegetables in a normal routine. In addition, the study accomplished its goal of comparing liking between the conditions through time, to the extent that the new liking is not limited to only the short-term, but it has demonstrable effects that continue for 3 months or more after the daily exposures. I find the results of the study important because it has interesting implications for how teachers, parents, and other adults who work with children should incentivize children to perform certain actions that are recognizably good for them and their future. For some, it is not intuitive that rewarding children despite their intrinsic motivations would work in the real world. For instance, a common belief is that children around the ages of 4 and 6 will perform those actions that they are inclined to perform, regardless of what adults attempt to reward them with to do otherwise. This study seems to suggest that children are actually more economical than one might be inclined to think. Unfortunately, what the study does not provide is a statistically significant distinction between the social reward and non-food tangible reward condition in terms of how successful the intervention was three months after the initial exposure. In other words, if one is looking to this study for as a how-to guide for incentivizing children, one might be lost as to whether praising children or giving them a sticker is the better incentive for them to act in response to a particular stimulus. Although the research did not suffer from any major limitations, it still fails to provide the practical support one would expect from a study of how to reward children in order to get them to do what adults want. In a follow up study, I would suggest that researchers both extend the conclusions of this particular study. Researchers could perform a longitudinal, cluster-randomized experiment similar to the one performed by Cooke et al. (2011); however, the children could be older than the ones used in their study and the children could be studied for a longer period. In addition, the purpose of this follow-up study would be to differentiate between the effectiveness of a social reward and a non-food tangible reward. Also, the unfavorable activity, instead of being the tasting of vegetables, might be the reading of books, which is also a normatively favorable habit for young children. As mentioned previously, the children in this follow-up study would be older than those used in the Cooke et al. (2011) study. Using older participants would accomplish two things: first, doing so would extend the results of the original study to a new population, and secondly, doing so opens up the possibility of using different kinds of stimuli. Thus, rather than using simple perceptual measures like in the case of tasting vegetables, an activity such as book reading could be used as a stimulus being studied. Given most children’s aversion to reading, this might be an acceptable choice. Like in the original study, children could be allowed to choose the book based on a rating system of six synopses read to them by the researcher. Regardless, the procedural setup of the experiment would be equivalent: exposure to the book for 12 sessions daily and a measure of their desire to read over a 1-month and 3-month period. However, the study could also extend the longitudinal aspect to perhaps a year. Because this study would be dealing with older children, it is more likely the book reading habit will stick than a taste for vegetables would with a 4- to 6-year old child. During the exposure period of this new experiment, children would be placed into the four conditions that Cooke et al. (2011) set up for their experiment. After being exposed to reading, the children would be given a reward. In the non-food tangible condition, this might be a quarter; in the social reward condition, this might be age-appropriate praise. In the other exposure condition and the control condition, they would not receive special attention. At the end of the first month, the participants in this experiment would be asked about how much they read in a typical week. Likewise, this question would be asked at the three-month point, the six-month point, the nine-month point, and the one-year point. Through this period, the progress could be graphed as a function of time in order to provide a clear picture of what happens over time with regard to the reading habit. Through the length of the experiment, the emphasis of the statistical analysis would be placed on the relative difference between the social reward condition and the non-food tangible reward condition. In order to differentiate between the two routes for incentivizing children, the longitudinal study would be conducted over this yearlong period. Conducting the experiment for such a long period gives each condition potential to stand out from the other and create a significant difference. In terms of what the expected result from this study would be, one should expect that it would closely match the results achieved by Cooke et al. (2011) in their study of children ages 4 to 6. Nevertheless, the social reward and the non-food tangible reward should be different for children at the end of the experiment. Personally, I would expect reading rates to continue to be higher in the non-food tangible reward condition for the fact that reading is a solitary activity, and the non-food tangible reward is based on giving to an individual. In contrast, the social reward is not likely going to appeal strongly to a child who has a disposition (or habit) of enjoying reading. Regardless, this expectation could easily shift depending on the initial effects of the exposure to reading. In sum, Cooke et al. (2011) presents an interesting and insightful method of analyzing the incentives open to children. In order to make up for the limitation in what they discovered through their statistical analysis, a follow-up study might expand their results to older children and, through a longer period, differentiate between the effectiveness of the social reward incentive and the non-food tangible reward incentive. Depending on which category of incentive wins in the long-run maintenance of the habit, teachers, parents, and other adults could be taught the most effective way of creating habits in young children. This could serve the ultimate purpose of developing children into healthy, well-functioning adults for the rest of their lives, depending on which habits adults instill within them. Bibliography Cooke, L., Chambers, L., Añez, E., Croker, H., Boniface, D., Yeomans, M., et al. (2011). Eating for pleasure or profit: The effect of incentives on children’s enjoyment of vegetables. Psychological Science, 22(2), 190-196. Read More