Effects of Advertising on Young Children's Perception of Taste

To test whether young children's actual taste preferences are influenced by the natural marketing environment in which they live. To do so, we tested whether preschool children would like the taste of a food more if they thought it was from a heavily marketed source. We asked preschool children to taste identical foods in packaging from this heavily marketed source and plain packaging, and to tell us if they tasted the same or if one tasted better. We hypothesized that, even among a sample of 3-5 year olds participating in Head Start, a federally-sponsored preschool program for low-income families, young children would prefer the taste of foods perceived to be from the heavily marketed source.