Child food neophobia and sympathetic arousal in response to odor exposure

Child food neophobia (CFN) refers to the rejection or avoidance of novel foods in childhood and often relates to poor olfactory abilities. Paradoxically, children with CFN are often described as being highly sensitive to various sensory qualities, including the olfactory aspects of food. We examined an arousal-based mechanism that might explain this inconsistency. Hypothetically, odors - particularly unfamiliar or food-related - may generate excessive sympathetic arousal in (sensitive) children with CFN. This heightened arousal could reduce their olfactory exploratory behaviors and hinder olfactory development, resulting in poorer performance on smell tests. We investigated this hypothesis by measuring sympathetic arousal in response to six food and non-food odors varying in familiarity in 95 children (46 girls and 49 boys) aged 4 - 9 years. We assessed the response amplitude of electrodermal activity as an index of sympathetic arousal following odor exposure relative to characteristics of children (CFN, anxiety, odor identification score, age, gender), caregivers (food neophobia, age), and odors (pleasantness and familiarity ratings, edibility, presentation order). Regarding the main study hypothesis, results indicated that self-assessed CFN was not significantly related to response amplitude of electrodermal activity. At the same time, response amplitude of electrodermal activity was positively predicted by the child's odor identification score. These findings suggest that heightened sympathetic arousal in response to odors does not contribute to avoidance of novel food products in child food neophobia.