Children’s reward responses to picture- and odor-cued food stimuli. A developmental analysis between 6 and 11 years

• Reward ratings to visual and olfactory food cues were measured in 6–11 year old children.
• From age 6 to 11, liking appeared stable while wanting and hunger decreased.
• The post-prandial effect on liking/wanting was smaller/absent in 7–9 year olds.
• Reward ratings were higher in boys than in girls.

The reward system is largely involved in the control of food intake. Whether components of this system (i.e., wanting and liking) change during development remains understudied, as well as how proximate factors (sensory cues, motivational state) modulate reward reactivity across development. We examined the developmental pattern of wanting and liking for sensorily-cued food stimuli in 6–11 year old children as a function of the child’s motivational state (hunger/satiety), gender, and the nature of foods. School children were exposed before or after their lunch on alternative days to visual and odor stimuli representing different categories of familiar foods. Their task was to rate wanting and liking of pictures and odorants of pizza, meat, vegetables, fruits, and chocolate. The following results were found: (1) While liking appeared to be stable from age 6 to 11, more particularly for visually-cued foods, wanting decreased, as well as did subjective hunger perception; (2) there were smaller or absent state-effects in 7-to-9-year-olds; (3) reward ratings were higher in boys than in girls; (4) reward ratings of vegetables were the lowest at all ages. These results suggest that wanting, but not liking, is developmentally variable over childhood, and that this variation depends on age, gender, motivational state (hunger/satiety), the nature of the food and the modality of the sensory cue representing it. Such developmental changes are discussed in relation to biological (adiposity rebound) and cognitive (dietary restraint) factors influencing the motivation to eat during middle (6–7 years) and late (9–11 years) childhood.