Perceptual and lexical knowledge of vegetables in preadolescent children

The present study investigated the visual and lexical knowledge of vegetables in children. The purpose of this was to identify both liked and disliked familiar vegetables which will be used in a further study. We explored children’s lexical knowledge with a free listing test and their visual knowledge with a picture’s sorting test. 145 children between the ages of 8 and 11 years from various living environments of the Rhône-Alpes Region, France, completed both tests. Overall, 54 vegetables were cited, 16 of which were cited by more than 9% of the sample. Carrots, tomatoes and lettuce were the most named vegetables and the best visually recognized by children. Lexical knowledge increased gradually with age. Children from rural areas named significantly more vegetables than those from urban areas. However, visual recognition of vegetables did not change as a function of age or living environment. This suggests that visual categorization allows easier accessing to semantic knowledge than verbal questioning. Finally, the data showed a relation between visual familiarity and liking: the majority of raw vegetables recognized visually were also classified as « liked vegetables ». In addition, children declared that they did not want to try most of the unknown vegetables.