A taste of the past. Investigating memory bias for self-selected disliked foods in children

Food rejection is common in early childhood and can reduce children's intake of healthy foods, limiting the variety and overall quality of their diet. Despite its prevalence, the cognitive mechanisms that may contribute to food rejection are not yet well understood. Memory may be particularly important, as children rely on stored evaluations of foods (whether they previously liked or disliked them) to guide later acceptance or refusal. A relevant framework here is the negativity bias, the tendency to process negative information more strongly than positive information. If this extends to food, children might remember disliked foods better than liked ones, which could in turn reinforce avoidance. The present study tested whether children show enhanced memory for self-selected disliked foods compared to liked foods and neutral control items, and whether this effect is stronger in picky eaters. The study included 105 children (aged 4-6), who selected their five most liked and five most disliked foods from a set of 26 images. Children then completed a three-alternative forced-choice discrimination task, in which they identified the target picture previously shown among visually similar options. Results revealed no evidence of a negative memory bias: recall accuracy did not differ between liked, disliked, and control items. Food rejection behaviors were also unrelated to memory performance across all categories. However, age significantly predicted accuracy, with older children performing better overall. These findings suggest that a negative memory bias may not explain children's food rejection behaviors. Future studies may explore other cognitive mechanisms that influence how children perceive, evaluate, and respond to foods as well as additional factors such as familiarity and social influence.