Effect of the age on the implicit and explicit emotional response elicited by food textures: A study with children and seniors

Texture is one of the main attributes that determine food preferences and choices in children and adult population, especially in seniors. This study was performed to evaluate the influence of a variety of solid food textures on implicit and explicit emotions in schoolchildren and seniors.

A group of 50 children (5–12 years old) and 50 seniors (55–75 years old) were recruited to evaluate three texture-modified products designed to have the same sensory characteristics in terms of taste, flavour, and appearance, but textures that varied according to the International Dysphagia Diet Standardisation Initiative (IDDSI). After the consumption of each sample, liking was measured with a 7-point hedonic scale, and emotions were monitored at the three levels of cognitive processing: (i) cognitive with self-reported questionnaires (emoji for children and EsSense25 for seniors), (ii) physiological with the measure of Skin Conductance Response (SCR), and (iii) behavioural with facial coding.

Results showed that the three textures elicited a different implicit and explicit emotional response in children and in seniors. The methodology used allowed us to identify the emotional configurations elicited by the three solid samples in each group of consumers and the dynamics of the emotion due to the monitoring conducted in real-time with facial coding and SCR.