Project Summary
Children of parents with obesity are twice as likely to develop obesity themselves, however, some children at
high familial risk are resilient to the disease (i.e., do not develop obesity themselves). Understanding the
sources that promote this resilience could inform obesity prevention, however, currently these sources are
poorly understood and have not been a strategic focus of prospective studies. Excess weight gain is ultimately
due to overconsumption, therefore, understanding the cognitive mechanisms driving eating behavior is critical
to successful prevention. This training plan builds upon my foundation in cognitive psychology to understand
individual differences in pediatric ingestive behaviors that promote resiliency to obesity in settings of high
familial obesity risk. Eating behaviors are learned through reinforcement (e.g., hedonic pleasure, parental
feedback) and rely on habitual (i.e., sensitive to rewards) and goal-directed (i.e., relies on knowledge of the
environment and goals16-18) systems. Building on my sponsor’s R01 study, which uses a prospective, family
risk design to identify risks for excess weight gain among healthy, 7-8 year-olds, this proposal aims to 1) identify
individual differences in food-related reinforcement learning that reduce susceptibility to laboratory
overconsumption; and 2) characterize individual differences in reinforcement learning and eating behaviors
that promote resiliency to excess gains in adiposity after 1 year. We hypothesize that greater reliance on goal-
directed food-related reinforcement learning will decrease susceptibility to overconsumption and serve as a
protective factor for excess weight gain after 1 year, particularly for children with high familial risk. To test this
hypothesis, we will enroll 90, 7-8 year-old healthy weight children at two levels of obesity risk (i.e., 45 high-risk
and 45 low-risk) based on parent weight status. Methods will include sophisticated analytical coding of video
recorded laboratory test meals and eating in the absence of hunger, a novel reinforcement learning task, and
anthropomorphic assessments of adiposity attained from dual x-ray absorptiometry (DXA; collected at baseline
and 1 year follow-up). The primary innovations offered by this proposal are 1) the use of both prospective and
family-risk designs, which will provide insight into the cognitive and behavioral factors that promote resiliency
to excess weight gain during the vulnerable pre-adolescent period; and 2) the use of sophisticated statistical
techniques to characterize a eating behaviors at a multi-item meal. In addition, a mentorship team with
strengths in pediatric obesity, ingestive behavior, dynamic coding of self-regulation, and sophisticated
quantitative analysis of individual differences will provide rigorous, inter-disciplinary training to advance my
research career. The proposed study will contribute essential information to our understanding of the cognitive
mechanisms supporting eating behavior and resiliency to obesity, which will highlight targets for prevention
programs.