L'alimentation selon l'âge et la culture : une analyse logico-naturelle des représentations construites par des enfants canadiens/québécois et roumains
This research focuses on children’s representations of food and nutrition from a constructivist epistemological perspective based on an interdisciplinary approach integrating communication and social psychology. Our goal was to determine which representations of food and nutrition could be understood as social representations, and if children’s age and cultural background interfered with the development of those representations. The subjects were children aged 7 to 12 from three different cultural backgrounds - we compared representations of food and nutrition built by children born, raised and educated in Romania and Quebec, as well as children from families of Romanian immigrants born (or raised from a very young age) in Quebec. The research methodology integrated social psychology and communication perspectives, instrumentally derived from natural logic and theories on social representations. Results suggest that children build social representations of food and nutrition, and that these representations become progressively more complex, undergoing a similar developmental process, according to children’s age, both from a cognitive and moral viewpoint. Moreover, the research highlights that socio-cultural background influences on the representations content and complexity refer either to cultural or ideological influences with regards to the differences and similarities between socio-cultural groups. Furthermore, we proposed scenarios of communication strategies aiming to increase the effectiveness of nutritional education programs. Finally, the research provides contributions to theories of social representations and child development as well as to the development of new methods for the analysis of representations.
representations of food and nutrition social representations natural logic healthy food junk food nutritional education developmental research