Assessing the Utility of the Eating in the Absence of Hunger At Home

• In Event: Poster Session 01
  In Poster Session: PS 01 Topic - Health, Growth, Injury

Abstract

Eating in the absence of hunger (EAH) is a behavioral paradigm used to measure children’s ability to self-regulate their food consumption by recording children’s caloric intake when given the freedom to eat unrestricted (Fisher & Birch, 1999). EAH tasks are typically conducted in a laboratory setting to ensure adequate experimental control, limiting its utility for field research (for one exception in a group care setting, see Musher-Eizenman & Holub, 2006). EAH can indicate obesity-risk (Faith et al., 2012), so validating a test that can be used in field research would be useful for developmental and intervention research. The current study examined the utility of the EAH task in a home setting by examining protocol fidelity and convergent validity.

Ninety-two 3- to 5-year old children (Table 1; 46% female) participated in the EAH task as part of a larger study (N = 101) designed to examine the influence of family behaviors on child eating habits. The EAH task was administered by a trained research assistant in an isolated room to limit distractions at the end of a 7-day period in which families engaged in other study activities (recording mealtimes, daily diaries). Children were first asked if they were hungry, half full, or full using pictures to get a record of child satiety. Children were then presented with two boxes full of toys and snacks, and, after orientation to the boxes, were told that they could play with or eat anything from the boxes. The RA completed their work silently for five minutes, while a video recorded children’s behavior. Snack foods (cookies, chocolate bars, sugar cereal, pretzels, and goldfish) were counted and weighed before and after to measure caloric consumption during the task. Videos were coded by a second cohort of RAs to identify any protocol deviations. Parents completed initial surveys of children’s over responsiveness to food (Wardle et al., 1992) as a test of convergent validity.

There were gender differences in EAH scores (t (90) = 2.03, p = .04); boys had greater caloric intake than girls. EAH was not related to child age, BMI percentile, or ratings of satiety (Table 1). Table 2 reports on protocol deviations. Some support was found for convergent validity for this task (Table 1), but only for dad’s reports. Since maternal and paternal reports of food responsiveness were also not significantly correlated, questions remain about the best way to assess this important construct.

The review of protocol deviations (Table 2) suggests that the family home environment provided some challenges to administering the EAH task in the home setting. In some cases, the parent or sibling distracted the child or the child left the table, which can be expected when lab-based tasks are done in the field. In addition, some protocol deviations suggest additional training of RAs might be required. This is the first pass of examining the utility of the EAH task in the field. Future steps include developing guidelines for when participants’ data should be dropped, and additional analysis of predictors of EAH.

Authors

• Melissa Heinrich, University of Texas at Dallas
  Presenting Author

• Callie Brooke De La Cerda, University of Texas at Dallas
  Non-Presenting Author

• Taryn White, University of Texas at Dallas
  Non-Presenting Author

• Shayla C Holub, University of Texas at Dallas
  Non-Presenting Author

• Jackie A Nelson, University of Texas at Dallas
  Non-Presenting Author