RESUMO
In recent decades, Cognitive Neuroscience has evolved from a rather arcane field trying to understand how the brain supports mental activities, to one that contributes to public policies. In this article, we focus on the contributions from Cognitive Neuroscience to Education. This line of research has produced a great deal of information that can potentially help in the transformation of Education, promoting interventions that help in several domains including literacy and math learning, social skills and science. The growth of the Neurosciences has also created a public demand for knowledge and a market for neuro-products to fulfill these demands, through books, booklets, courses, apps and websites. These products are not always based on scientific findings and coupled to the complexities of the scientific theories and evidence, have led to the propagation of misconceptions and the perpetuation of neuromyths. This is particularly harmful for educators because these misconceptions might make them abandon useful practices in favor of others not sustained by evidence. In order to bridge the gap between Education and Neuroscience, we have been conducting, since 2013, a set of activities that put educators and scientists to work together in research projects. The participation goes from discussing the research results of our projects to being part and deciding aspects of the field interventions. Another strategy consists of a course centered around the applications of Neuroscience to Education and their empirical and theoretical bases. These two strategies have to be compared to popularization efforts that just present Neuroscientific results. We show that the more the educators are involved in the discussion of the methodological bases of Neuroscientific knowledge, be it in the course or as part of a stay, the better they manage the underlying concepts. We argue that this is due to the understanding of scientific principles, which leads to a more profound comprehension of what the evidence can and cannot support, thus shielding teachers from the false allure of some commercial neuro-products. We discuss the three approaches and present our efforts to determine whether they lead to a strong understanding of the conceptual and empirical base of Neuroscience.
RESUMO
Cognitive styles are characteristic and stable ways in which people acquire, organize and use information for solving problems and making decisions. Field dependence/independence is one of the most studied cognitive styles. Field independent subjects are characterized by having less difficulty in separating information from its contextual surroundings and being less likely to be influenced by external cues than field dependent individuals. The present work aimed at studying the influence of field dependence/independence cognitive style on consumers' visual processing and choice of yogurt labels. One hundred and thirty three consumers completed a choice conjoint task. They were asked to select their preferred yogurt label from each of 16 pairs of labels. While they completed the task their eye movements were recorded using an eye-tracker. Then, consumers were asked to complete the Group Embedded Figure Test to determine their cognitive style. Consumers were divided into two groups with different cognitive styles: 58% of the sample was characterized as field dependent and 42% as field independent. When making their choices, field dependent consumers tended to engage in less thoughtful information processing than field independent consumers and they made fewer fixations on traditional nutritional information. Besides, cognitive style significantly affected the relative importance of fat and sugar content on consumer choices and modulated the influence of the traffic light system. Field dependent consumers gave less importance to the nutritional composition of the yogurts than field independent consumers for selecting their preferred label. Results from this work suggest that studying the psychological underpinnings of consumers' decision making process when selecting food products has a great potential to contribute to a better understanding of how eating patterns and consumer preferences are shaped.
RESUMO
The aim of this work was to evaluate consumer visual processing of food labels when evaluating the salt content of pan bread labels and to study the influence of label design and nutritional labelling format on consumer attention. A total of 16 pan bread labels, designed according to a full factorial design, were presented to 52 participants, who were asked to decide whether the sodium content of each label was medium or low, while their eye movements were recorded using an eye tracker. Results showed that most participants looked at nutrition labels and the traffic light system to conclude on the salt content of the labels. However, the average percentage of participants who looked at the actual sodium content was much lower. Nutrition information format affected participants' processing of nutrition information. Among other effects, the inclusion of the traffic light system increased participants' attention towards some kind of nutrition information and facilitated its processing, but not its understanding.
Assuntos
Atenção , Pão , Compreensão , Movimentos Oculares , Rotulagem de Alimentos , Ciências da Nutrição , Cloreto de Sódio na Dieta , Adolescente , Adulto , Tomada de Decisões , Dieta , Olho , Feminino , Rotulagem de Alimentos/métodos , Comportamentos Relacionados com a Saúde , Humanos , Masculino , Cloreto de Sódio na Dieta/administração & dosagem , Adulto JovemRESUMO
The aim of the present work was to assess the influence of nutrition information format on attentional capture and consumers' understanding. Sixteen labels of two products (yoghurt and pan bread) were designed following a four 2-level factors full factorial design with the following variables: label background design, type of product, nutrition information format and traffic light system. The labels were presented to 178 consumers, who were asked to decide whether the fat/sodium content of each yoghurt/pan bread label was medium or low. Participant responses and reaction times were recorded. Results showed that type of product, nutrition information format and traffic light system significantly affected the time needed by consumers to find the nutrition information and to classify the labels according to their content of a given nutrient. Meanwhile, consumers' understanding of the labels was mostly affected by the content of the nutrient and the presence of the traffic light system.