Clinical trial NCT06108128: Food for Thought: Executive Functioning Around Eating Among Children
Official title: Characterizing Top-down Dimensions of Appetite Self-regulation Among Preschoolers
Study type: INTERVENTIONAL
Overall status: RECRUITING
Phase: NA
Conditions: Self-regulation
Appetitive Behavior
Eating Behavior
Child Obesity
Lead sponsor: Temple University
Sponsor class: OTHER
Collaborators: name: Baylor College of Medicine
name: University of Nevada, Reno
First posted: 2023-10-30
Enrollment: 125
Sex: ALL
Minimum age (years): 4
Maximum age (years): 6
Standard ages: CHILD
Accepts healthy volunteers: yes
Allocation: NA
Intervention model: SINGLE_GROUP
Intervention model description: This is an observational, cross-sectional study that involves interventions ONLY at the measurement level.
Primary purpose: OTHER

Brief summary: 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.

Eligibility criteria: 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

Primary outcomes:
measure: Food choice
timeFrame: Assessed at 1 of 2 study visits over 2 weeks
measure: Eating in the absence of hunger
timeFrame: Assessed at 1 of 2 study visits over 2 weeks
measure: Body mass index z-score
timeFrame: Assessed at 1 of 2 study visits over 2 weeks
Secondary outcomes:
Other outcomes:
Locations:
city: Philadelphia
country: United States
facility: Temple University
state: Pennsylvania
Study officials:
affiliation: Temple University
name: Jennifer O Fisher, PHD
role: PRINCIPAL_INVESTIGATOR
References:
citation: 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.