Associations Among Food Delay of Gratification, Cognitive Measures, and Environment in a Community Preschool Sample
Loading...
Date
2022-04-11
Authors
Giuliani, Nicole R.
Kelly, Nichole R.
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Frontiers in Nutrition
Abstract
Much of the work on the development of appetite self-regulation in early childhood
employs tasks assessing Delay of Gratification (DoG). While this skill is thought to rely on
“cool” cognitive processes like effortful control, executive functioning, and self-regulation,
demonstration of how laboratory measures of food DoG relate to common assessments
of those cognitive processes in community samples of children is needed. This study
presents secondary data investigating the associations between two laboratory tasks
of food DoG, the Snack Delay and Tongue Tasks, and an array of laboratory and
parent-report cognitive measures in a sample of 88 children ages 3-6 (M age = 4.05,
SD = 0.76), as well as how four measures of the child’s environment were associated
with food DoG. Results indicated that both measures of food DoG were positively
correlated with performance on the cognitive tasks, with stronger associations observed
for the Tongue Task. Family income was positively associatedwith food DoG asmeasured
by the Tongue Task, and child negative life events in the past year were negatively
correlated with food DoG as measured by the Snack Delay Task. These findings present
the pattern of associations between cognitive tasks and food DoG, the development of
which may be meaningfully affected by specific aspects of family environment.
Description
10 pages
Keywords
Delay of gratification, Cognitive measures, Executive function, Preschool, Environment
Citation
Giuliani NR and Kelly NR (2022) Associations Among Food Delay of Gratification, Cognitive Measures, and Environment in a Community Preschool Sample. Front. Nutr. 9:788583. doi: 10.3389/fnut.2022.788583