Food neophobia predicts early cognitive development: A longitudinal study.

Abstract

Food neophobia, the tendency to reject novel food, has been linked to children's categorization and executive functions in cross-sectional research, but the developmental direction of these relations remains unclear. This longitudinal study examined reciprocal relations between these variables across one school year in French children. Participants were 113 children (50 girls; M age = 48.30 ± 7.20 months at Time 1) recruited from five public preschools in a large metropolitan area. Data were collected between 2023 and 2024 (Time 2). Race and ethnicity data were not collected due to national regulations. Caregivers reported children's food neophobia, and children completed a food categorization task and measures of working memory, inhibition, and cognitive flexibility. Most constructs showed temporal stability across waves. Higher food neophobia at Time 1 predicted lower categorization performance (β = -.263) and lower executive functions (β = -.195), controlling for prior levels. In contrast, categorization performance and executive functions did not predict subsequent changes in food neophobia. These findings suggest that food neophobia prospectively relates to later differences in children's executive functions and their ability to use food-category knowledge under task demands, consistent with the possibility that early avoidance tendencies shape engagement with cognitively informative experiences during development.