A picture-flavour paradigm for studying complex conditioning processes in food preference learning

An important route through which food (dis)likes can be acquired is Evaluative Conditioning (EC). A simple and convenient EC procedure for studying food (dis)likes was described by Verhulst et al. [Verhulst, F., Hermans, D., Baeyens, F., Spruyt, A., & Eelen, P. (2006). Determinants and predictive validity of direct and indirect measures of recently acquired food attitudes. Appetite, 46(2), 137–143]. We compared this procedure, in which the conditioned and unconditioned stimulus form a compound, with an adapted version in which they are autonomous stimuli. Self-report and affective priming results indicated strong and comparable EC effects in both procedures. Hence, our adaptation constitutes a good alternative for the original procedure. It moreover allows investigating a broader range of topics in food preference learning.