Investigating the nature and ontogeny of cognitive processes shaping human food behaviors, by Camille Rioux

INVESTIGATING THE NATURE AND ONTOGENY OF COGNITIVE PROCESSES SHAPING HUMAN FOOD BEHAVIORS

Summary
The research presented in this talk takes root in the idea that the problems humans faced with respect to food selection through their history – identifying beneficial foods in the environment while avoiding the costs of consuming something toxic – has shaped our minds in ways that continue to guide eating behaviors today. I will present four research axes that provide an in-depth analysis of human food cognition from infancy to adulthood. The first two lines of research focus on the development of the capacity to recognize and evaluate potential food items (Axis 1: Find and Axis 2: Evaluate). The third and fourth lines of research focus on the complementary role of behavioral avoidance strategies and selective social learning to exclude the cost of ingesting something harmful and decide which foods to eat (Axis 3: Exclude and Axis 4: Decide).  This research has far reaching applications in the health and educational domain, as a better understanding of what drives our food behaviors will help to identify effective levers for action and to develop new evidence-based policy approaches to tackle the rise of food-related health disorders.

Short Biography
How do we learn what to eat and what shapes our food behaviors? Camille Rioux’s research investigates this broad question. Notably, she studies how infants and young children learn what is edible and what is not, both individually and with the help of others, using methods from developmental psychology to neuroscience. She undertook her PhD in cognitive and developmental psychology (2014-2017) under the supervision of J. Lafraire (Research Center of the Institut Paul Bocuse, Lyon, France) and D. Picard (Aix-Marseille University, France), where she examined the relationship between development of reasoning about food and food rejection behaviors in children. She then conducted a post-doc at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development (Berlin) under the supervision of A. Wertz, where she studied how infants interact and learn about plant food (2018-2022). Since October 2022 she has been a postdoc at the Integrative Neuroscience and Cognition Center (CNRS UMR8002) under the supervision of Olivier Mascaro. Her research now focuses on food categorization development and social cognition in infancy.
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