Wiggins2024

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Wiggins2024
BibType ARTICLE
Key Wiggins2024
Author(s) Sally Wiggins, Jakob Cromdal, Annerose Willemsen
Title Daring to taste: The organisation of children’s tasting practices during preschool lunches
Editor(s)
Tag(s) EMCA, Discursive psychology, Children, Preschool, Tasting, Willingness to try, In press
Publisher
Year 2024
Language English
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Month
Journal Appetite
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Number
Pages
URL Link
DOI 10.1016/j.appet.2024.107378
ISBN
Organization
Institution
School
Type
Edition
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Howpublished
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Abstract

Tasting food is the first step toward diversifying eating habits and studies with children have typically focused on their sensory education and willingness to try new foods. While very little is known about how children taste foods during everyday mealtimes, EMCA (ethnomethodological and conversation analytic) research on adult tasting in naturalistic settings has demonstrated regular organisational patterns. This paper brings these two research areas together, using the insights of EMCA research on adult tasting to inform our understanding of how young children taste food during preschool lunches. Data are taken from a large corpus of video-recorded lunches in Sweden, in which children (3- to 6-year-olds) were eating with staff members. Discursive psychology and multimodal Conversation Analysis were used to analyse the data. The analysis demonstrates how the sequential organisation of child tasting is very similar to adult tasting, and how tasting practices are a collaborative, multisensory activity involving various embodied practices: from the orientation to food as 'to be tasted', the withdrawal of mutual gaze and exaggerated mouth movements, and the re-establishment of gaze accompanying the food assessment. In contrast to adult tasting, however, tasting during preschool lunches is often framed in terms of personal development of the child and of the individualising of taste within the framework of the institution. The findings thus provide further support for EMCA research on sensory practices and contribute to psychological research on children's eating by evidencing the importance of the interactional and institutional context on tasting as a sensory practice.

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