Habituation to Food in Children

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): One of the basic properties of the nervous system to repeated stimulation is habituation. Eating involves the repeated presentation of food cues, which should lead to habituation. Basic animal and human research has shown that a variety of responses related to eating habituate over repeated food presentations. The habituated response can be dishabituated by presentation of novel food or by presenting an environmental event that requires allocation of processing resources. Habituation may help understand why food variety, and stimuli such as television watching are associated with increases in intake. All of the research with humans to date has been done with adults. The purpose of this grant is to extend this research to children. Six experiments are proposed in the grant. The first two experiments evaluate novel food and food variety as factors that influence habituation to repeated food cues. Experiments 3-5 evaluate the influence of non-food stimuli on habituation to food cues. Experiment 3 assesses differences in allocation of processing resources by comparing controlled and automatic search tasks on habituation. Experiments 4 and 5 assess the influence of two common distractors during eating on habituation, watching videos and reading. Experiment 6 evaluates whether food variety has similar effects on salivary habituation and changes in motivated responding to obtain and consume food. These studies will provide a theoretical basis for oral habituation and eating in children, and may provide behavioral mechanisms that influence eating and body weight in children which may be important in understanding methods to prevent obesity in youth.