A cognitive model of children's reporting of food intake

Abstract

A model of cognitive processing is proposed to understand children's self-reports of diet. The model is a simplification of what is known about cognitive processing and includes three structural components: sensory register, short-term memory, and long-term memory. Several processes describe functioning of the model, including attention, perception (or interpretation), organization, retention, retrieval, and response formulation. The ideas explain several phenomena in the literature on children's self-reports of dietary intake. Research questions are identified for each process to help specify the model and lead to improved methods for dietary assessment in children.