Food for Thought: Executive Functioning Around Eating Among Children
For patients and families
In plain language
An automatic summary of structured registry data. It is an orientation aid, not a substitute for the official protocol or a physician assessment.
- What is being studied
- The protocol lists: Executive functioning observational tasks.
- Who it may be relevant to
- Registry conditions: Self-regulation, Appetitive Behavior, Eating Behavior, Child Obesity. Basic parameters: 4 years — 6 years · All.
- What needs checking
- Age, condition and sex are only basic indicators. Prior treatment, laboratory values and other mandatory requirements appear in the eligibility criteria below.
- Where it takes place
- United States
- Next step
- Save the trial, show it to the treating physician, and confirm current recruitment with the study center. Costs, documents and travel →
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Official title
Characterizing Top-down Dimensions of Appetite Self-regulation Among Preschoolers
Overview
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.
Detailed 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.
Interventions
- Other Executive functioning observational tasks
Interventions take place solely at the measurement level, where children will be seen in observational tasks of general executive functioning and executive functioning around eating in which various food and non-food stimuli are presented and children's responses to task instructions are recorded.
Primary outcome measures
- Food choice [Time frame: Assessed at 1 of 2 study visits over 2 weeks]
- Eating in the absence of hunger [Time frame: Assessed at 1 of 2 study visits over 2 weeks]
- Body mass index z-score [Time frame: Assessed at 1 of 2 study visits over 2 weeks]
Eligibility criteria
Inclusion criteria
- Child ages 4 to 6 years of age
- Caregiver reporting primary responsibility for child feeding outside of childcare
- Caregiver legal guardian
Exclusion criteria
- Caregiver <18 years of age
- Child major food allergies
- Child medication use, developmental disability, or medical conditions known to affect food intake and/or growth; color blindness
- Child in foster care
Criteria are shown verbatim from the registry (in English). Final eligibility is always assessed by the study center.
Healthy volunteers: Yes
Study design
- Allocation
- N/A
- Model
- Single group
- Masking
- Open label
- Primary purpose
- Other
Study locations
United States · 1 center
- Temple University — Philadelphia
Publications
- Russell CG, Russell A. "Food" and "non-food" self-regulation in childhood: a review and reciprocal analysis. Int J Behav Nutr Phys Act. 2020 Mar 10;17(1):33. doi: 10.1186/s12966-020-00928-5. PMID 32151265
Identifiers
NCT: NCT06108128 · R21HD109362