Relatively little is known about how mental development during childhood parallels brain maturation, and how these processes may have an impact on changes in eating behavior: in particular in vegetable consumption. This review aims to bridge this research gap by integrating both recent findings from the study on brain maturation with recent results from research on cognitive development. Developmental human neuroscientific research in the field of the sensory systems and on the relationship between children’s cognitive development and vegetable consumption serve as benchmarks. We have identified brain maturation and mental growth patterns that may affect child vegetable consumption and conclude that both of these developmental patterns partially match with the Piagetian theory of development. Additionally, we conclude that a series of potential modulating factors, such as learning-related experiences, may lead to fluctuations in the course of those particular developmental patterns, and thus vegetable consumption patterns. Therefore, we propose a theoretical predictive model of child vegetable consumption in which the nature of the relationship between its correlational and/or causal components should be studied in the future by adopting an integral research perspective of the three targeted study levels: brain, cognition and behavior.

关于儿童时期的智力发育如何与大脑成熟相平行，以及这些过程如何影响饮食行为的变化，尤其是在食用蔬菜方面，人们知之甚少。这篇综述旨在通过整合大脑成熟研究的最新发现与认知发展研究的最新成果来弥合这一研究差距。在感觉系统领域以及儿童认知发展与食用蔬菜之间的关系方面，人类神经科学研究的发展作为基准。我们已经确定了可能影响儿童蔬菜食用量的大脑成熟度和心理成长模式，并得出结论，这两种发展模式均与皮亚杰发展理论部分匹配。另外，我们得出的结论是，一系列潜在的调节因素，例如与学习相关的经验，可能会导致这些特定的发展方式以及蔬菜消费方式的波动。因此，我们提出了一种儿童蔬菜消费量的理论预测模型，该模型在未来应通过采用三个目标研究水平的整体研究视角来研究其相关和/或因果成分之间关系的性质。行为。