Leveraging intuitive theories to teach nutrition to young children
Abstract/Contents
- Abstract
- A large body of research in cognitive development suggests that from early in life, children construct coherent belief systems, or intuitive theories, to understand, predict, and explain the world. Gripshover and Markman (2013) harnessed this insight to create an intervention tailored for teaching young children that foods have different nutritional profiles—no one food provides all the nutrients the body needs—and therefore we need a variety of healthy foods. Learning this framework required children to overcome gaps and misconceptions in their developing intuitive theories, but children nevertheless learned and generalized this new theory, used it to explain the importance of variety, and even ate more vegetables at snack time. The current research demonstrates that the materials are likely to be appropriate educational for a wide range of populations of preschool to first-grade children (Study 1), that children spontaneously appeal to the conceptual framework to explain a wide range of novel facts and claims (Study 2), and that the intervention may even encourage children to recognize the importance of individual ingredients in determining the health value of composite dishes, such as stew and salad (Study 3). Together, these results provide a model of how to construct and evaluate health education materials that teach young children the science behind health-related domains such as nutrition.
Description
| Type of resource | text |
|---|---|
| Form | electronic; electronic resource; remote |
| Extent | 1 online resource. |
| Publication date | 2014 |
| Issuance | monographic |
| Language | English |
Creators/Contributors
| Associated with | Gripshover, Sarah |
|---|---|
| Associated with | Stanford University, Department of Psychology. |
| Primary advisor | Markman, Ellen M |
| Thesis advisor | Markman, Ellen M |
| Thesis advisor | Frank, Michael C, (Professor of human biology) |
| Thesis advisor | Walton, Gregory M. (Gregory Mariotti) |
| Advisor | Frank, Michael C, (Professor of human biology) |
| Advisor | Walton, Gregory M. (Gregory Mariotti) |
Subjects
| Genre | Theses |
|---|
Bibliographic information
| Statement of responsibility | Sarah Gripshover. |
|---|---|
| Note | Submitted to the Department of Psychology. |
| Thesis | Thesis (Ph.D.)--Stanford University, 2014. |
| Location | electronic resource |
Access conditions
- Copyright
- © 2014 by Sarah Jane Gripshover
- License
- This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial 3.0 Unported license (CC BY-NC).
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