Food for Thought: Executive Functioning Around Eating Among Children

Temple University

Status: Enrolling

Conditions: Appetitive Behavior; Eating Behavior; Child Obesity; Self-regulation

Treatments: Other: Executive functioning observational tasks

Study type: Interventional

Funder types: Other

Identifiers

NCT06108128

R21HD109362

Details and patient eligibility

About

Scientific knowledge of the cognitive-developmental processes that serve to support children's appetite self-regulation are surprisingly limited. This investigation will provide new scientific directions for obesity prevention by elucidating cognitive-developmental influences on young children's ability to make healthy food choices and eat in moderation.

Full description

Appetite self-regulation (ASR) has been described as involving children's use of eating-specific, "top-down" cognitive processes to moderate "bottom-up" biological drives to eat. Much of the research to date on ASR has focused on the role of bottom-up drives in shaping children's behavioral susceptibility to obesity. Alternatively, little is known about the cognitive-developmental processes that shape children's ability to make healthy food choices and eat in moderation during early childhood. The goal of this exploratory investigation is to produce rigorous evidence of cognitive developmental influences on healthy eating behaviors and weight status during preschool through the development of new measures of top-down ASR. Participants will be 125 preschoolers and their primary caregiver. Existing measures of executive functioning in children will be adapted to create new measures of eating-specific, top-down ASR. Associations with children's eating behaviors, body mass index z-scores, food parenting will be assessed.

Enrollment: 125 estimated patients

Sex: All

Ages: 4 to 6 years old

Volunteers: Accepts Healthy Volunteers

Inclusion criteria

1. Child ages 4 to 6 years of age
2. Caregiver reporting primary responsibility for child feeding outside of childcare
3. Caregiver legal guardian

Exclusion criteria

1. Caregiver <18 years of age
2. Child major food allergies
3. Child medication use, developmental disability, or medical conditions known to affect food intake and/or growth; color blindness
4. Child in foster care

Trial design

Primary purpose: Other

Allocation: N/A

Interventional model: Single Group Assignment

Masking: None (Open label)