Food for Thought: Executive Functioning Around Eating Among Children

Characterizing Top-down Dimensions of Appetite Self-regulation Among Preschoolers

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.

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.

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