Childhood ObesityNCT06534541
Genetic Risk, Parental Feeding Practices, and Appetitive Traits in Early Life
A study testing Attentional bias to food cues in people with Childhood Obesity, run by Trustees of Dartmouth College at 1 site in United States.
Trial summary
The preschool years (2-5 years of age) is a critical timeframe to shape the lifetime risk of obesity. While the causes of obesity are complex, appetitive traits related to overeating, such as high food approach and low food avoidance, are robustly associated with a greater BMI among children. Read more about this study
- Who is it for?
- Ages 27 to 72 monthsHealthy volunteers can take part
- Conditions the study is for
- Childhood Obesity
- What is being tested?
- Attentional bias to food cues
- Type of treatment
- Lifestyle or therapy programme
- Could I receive a placebo?
- No, everyone receives an active treatment
- How many people
- 330 participants
- Where
- 1 siteUnited States
- Study dates
- 18 Jul 2024to Aug 2029
- Phase
- Interventional
- Are there results?
- Not yet: the study is under way
Key requirements
Who can take part, as listed by the sponsor. Only the study team can confirm whether you are eligible, so take this list to your doctor.
- Ages 27 to 72 months
- All sexes
- Healthy volunteers accepted
- Child
Who may be able to join
- parent must be ≥18 years old, have primary custody of their child for ≥75% of the month, comprehend verbal and written English and not plan to move out of Vermont or New Hampshire during the study timeframe.
- Children must be ≥2.25 and ≤2.99 years old at first visit and have normal or corrected-to-normal vision to enable eye tracking.
Who cannot join
- Children with any relevant food allergies or dietary restrictions, taking medication or with a medical condition that affects appetite or attention, or with a relative enrolled in the study will be excluded.
Trial locations and contacts
1 site in 1 country. Contact the study team or a site near you to ask about taking part.
United States1 site, 1 recruiting
- Recruiting
Dartmotuh College
Hanover, New Hampshire, 03765
John Brand, PhD, john.brand@dartmouth.edu
About this study
Official title: Characterizing the Relationships of Genetic Risk and Parental Coercive Feeding Practices With Appetitive Traits and Adiposity Gain Across Early Life.
The preschool years (2-5 years of age) is a critical timeframe to shape the lifetime risk of obesity. While the causes of obesity are complex, appetitive traits related to overeating, such as high food approach and low food avoidance, are robustly associated with a greater BMI among children. Some children are genetically pre-disposed to expressing obesogenic appetitive traits, and those traits may mediate a genetic risk for obesity. Separately, parental feeding practices are emerging as an important, yet modifiable, influence on children's obesity risk. Coercive control feeding practices, such as strictly limiting a child's intake of highly palatable foods (restriction) and using food to control children's negative emotions (emotional feeding), are believed to be detrimental for young children because they impede self-regulatory skills around eating and may increase the saliency of highly palatable foods. The goal for this project is to disentangle the inter-relationships between coercive control feeding practices, children's obesogenic appetitive traits, and children's dietary intake across the preschool years to understand how coercive control feeding practices ultimately impact children's adiposity gain over time. Importantly, the investigators aim to understand how those effects differ based on children's underlying genetic risk for obesity. The investigators hypothesize that parents will respond to children's obesogenic appetitive traits by exhibiting more coercive control feeding practices (restriction, emotional feeding), which in turn, will promote future increase in obesogenic appetitive traits and overconsumption, leading to excess adiposity gain among children. Importantly, the investigators hypothesize children with a high genetic risk for obesity will be most susceptible to the negative effects of coercive control feeding practices because food is highly salient for them. The investigators will test the hypotheses among a cohort of children aged 2.5 years old using a longitudinal study design with repeated assessments every 6 months until children are 5 years old. If successful, study findings may be leveraged to develop tailored strategies to help parents support healthy eating behaviors among their young children that consider the heterogeneity in obesogenic appetitive traits among young children due to genetic risk factors.
Read the detailed description
The goal for this project is to disentangle the inter-relationships between coercive control feeding practices, children's obesogenic appetitive traits, and children's dietary intake across the preschool years to understand how coercive control feeding practices ultimately impact children's adiposity gain over time.
The investigators will assess children's genetic risk for obesity via candidate single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) and a polygenic risk score. Importantly, this novel approach expands upon previous research by including the investigator's lab's proven, objective paradigm to measure children's food approach and overconsumption. Specifically, the investigators will use eye-tracking to measure children's attentional bias to food, an objective metric of food approach. The investigators also include an eating in the absence of hunger paradigm to objectively measure children's overconsumption.
The investigators will test this hypotheses among a cohort of children aged 2.5 years old using a longitudinal study design with repeated assessments every 6 months until children are 5 years old.
- Conditions
- Childhood Obesity
- Being tested
- Attentional bias to food cues
- Medical subject headings
- Pediatric Obesity
What participants receive
What participants receive. In a randomised study each person is assigned to one group by chance.
Attentional bias to food cuesBehavioural
Measurement of the amount of attention given to food cues
| Study group | Role | What they receive |
|---|---|---|
| Food Cues | Active comparator | Attentional bias to Food cues experimental measurement Receives: Behavioral: Attentional bias to food cues |
| Control Cues | Active comparator | Attentional bias to food cues control measurement Receives: Behavioral: Attentional bias to food cues |
What is being measured
The primary outcome is the main question the study is designed to answer.
Coercive Parental Food Practices
Coercive Parental Food Practices will be assessed using the Child Feeding Questionnaire (CFQ) and Parental Feeding Style Questionnaire (PFSQ). The CFQ restriction subscale, with scores for each of 8 items ranging from 1 to 5 (never to always practice the behavior), will be averaged for a single final Restriction score. The 3 items of the emotional feeding domain from the PFSQ, ranging from 1 to 5 (never to always practice the behavior) will be averaged for a single final Emotional Feeding score.
Measured: Measured every 6 months from baseline until 2.5 years after baseline.
Appetitive Traits
Child appetitive traits will be assessed via parent report using the validated Children's Eating Behavior Questionnaire (CEBQ). The CEBQ includes subscales to measure food approach and food avoidance traits. Final scores for each subscale is computed as the average across subscale items and range from 1 to 5 (never to always express that trait).
Measured: Measured every 6 months from baseline until 2.5 years after baseline.
Eating in the Absence of Hunger.
Eating in the Absence of Hunger. Eating in the absence of hunger will be calculated using established methods (Gilbert-Diamond et al., IJO 2017; Fisher \& Birch., AM J of Clin Nutr 2002). The pre- and post-weights of each snack items will be used to calculate the number of kCals a child consumed. Increased kCal consumption is evidence of increased eating in the absence of hunger.
Measured: Measured every 6 months from baseline until 2.5 years after baseline.
Adiposity
Adiposity in children will be operationalized as the age- and sex-adjusted BMI z-score. Child height and weight at each assessment will be measured in-person and be used to calculate age and sex-specific BMI z-scores based on WHO child growth charts. If the child is lost to follow up and we cannot obtain in-person measures, we will abstract height and weight from the child's medical records if they consented to that data collection during the baseline visit.
Measured: Measured every 6 months from baseline until 2.5 years after baseline.
Timeline
From the start of the study to its completion; the mark is today. Estimated dates are the sponsor’s plan.
- First posted2 Aug 2024
- Study start18 Jul 2024
- Primary completionAug 2028 (estimated)
- Study completionAug 2029 (estimated)
Resources
- Official record on ClinicalTrials.govThe registry entry this page is built from, with its full change history.
- Other trials for Childhood ObesityStudies of the same condition, open and under way.
- What the trial phases meanHow a treatment moves from first tests in people to approval.
More details
For doctors and researchers: how the study is designed, who runs it, and its registry IDs.
Study design
- Study type
- Interventional
- Phase
- Phase N/A
- Primary purpose
- Basic science
- Allocation
- Randomised
- Intervention model
- Crossover
- Masking
- Single blind
- Who is masked
- Participant
- Enrolment
- 330 participants (estimated)
Sponsor and investigators
- Lead sponsor
- Trustees of Dartmouth College
- Sponsor type
- University, hospital or other
- Collaborators
- Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center, National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases (NIDDK), Dartmouth College
- Responsible party
- Principal investigator, Jennifer Emond, Trustees of Dartmouth College
- Investigators
- Jennifer Emond, PhD, Principal investigator, Dartmouth CollegeDiane Gilbert-Diamond, ScD, Principal investigator, Dartmouth College
IDs, dates and publications
- ClinicalTrials.gov ID
- NCT06534541
- Sponsor's protocol ID
- AWD00012907
- Other IDs
- 1R01DK136698-01
- Status last verified
- Oct 2026
- First submitted
- 30 Jul 2024
- Last updated
- 15 Oct 2026
- Results posted
- No
- FDA-regulated drug
- No
- FDA-regulated device
- No
- Individual data sharing
- No
Study at a glance
From the registry record, last updated by the sponsor on 15 Oct 2026. Recruitment status is as the sponsor reported it: confirm with the study team.
- Official title
- Characterizing the Relationships of Genetic Risk and Parental Coercive Feeding Practices With Appetitive Traits and Adiposity Gain Across Early Life.
- ClinicalTrials.gov ID
- NCT06534541
- Acronym / sponsor ID
- AWD00012907
- Conditions
- Childhood Obesity
- Study type
- Interventional
- Recruitment status
- Recruiting
- Enrolment
- 330 participants (estimated)
- Lead sponsor
- Trustees of Dartmouth CollegeUniversity, hospital or other
- Collaborators
- Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center, National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases (NIDDK), Dartmouth College
- Study start
- 18 Jul 2024 (actual)
- Primary completion
- Aug 2028 (estimated)
- Study completion
- Aug 2029 (estimated)
- First posted
- 2 Aug 2024 (actual)
- Results
- Not posted in the source record
Clinical summary
The research question as the sponsor registered it. This describes what the study plans to test, not what it found.
The preschool years (2-5 years of age) is a critical timeframe to shape the lifetime risk of obesity. While the causes of obesity are complex, appetitive traits related to overeating, such as high food approach and low food avoidance, are robustly associated with a greater BMI among children. Some children are genetically pre-disposed to expressing obesogenic appetitive traits, and those traits may mediate a genetic risk for obesity. Separately, parental feeding practices are emerging as an important, yet modifiable, influence on children's obesity risk. Coercive control feeding practices, such as strictly limiting a child's intake of highly palatable foods (restriction) and using food to control children's negative emotions (emotional feeding), are believed to be detrimental for young children because they impede self-regulatory skills around eating and may increase the saliency of highly palatable foods. The goal for this project is to disentangle the inter-relationships between coercive control feeding practices, children's obesogenic appetitive traits, and children's dietary intake across the preschool years to understand how coercive control feeding practices ultimately impact children's adiposity gain over time. Importantly, the investigators aim to understand how those effects differ based on children's underlying genetic risk for obesity. The investigators hypothesize that parents will respond to children's obesogenic appetitive traits by exhibiting more coercive control feeding practices (restriction, emotional feeding), which in turn, will promote future increase in obesogenic appetitive traits and overconsumption, leading to excess adiposity gain among children. Importantly, the investigators hypothesize children with a high genetic risk for obesity will be most susceptible to the negative effects of coercive control feeding practices because food is highly salient for them. The investigators will test the hypotheses among a cohort of children aged 2.5 years old using a longitudinal study design with repeated assessments every 6 months until children are 5 years old. If successful, study findings may be leveraged to develop tailored strategies to help parents support healthy eating behaviors among their young children that consider the heterogeneity in obesogenic appetitive traits among young children due to genetic risk factors.
Detailed description
The goal for this project is to disentangle the inter-relationships between coercive control feeding practices, children's obesogenic appetitive traits, and children's dietary intake across the preschool years to understand how coercive control feeding practices ultimately impact children's adiposity gain over time.
The investigators will assess children's genetic risk for obesity via candidate single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) and a polygenic risk score. Importantly, this novel approach expands upon previous research by including the investigator's lab's proven, objective paradigm to measure children's food approach and overconsumption. Specifically, the investigators will use eye-tracking to measure children's attentional bias to food, an objective metric of food approach. The investigators also include an eating in the absence of hunger paradigm to objectively measure children's overconsumption.
The investigators will test this hypotheses among a cohort of children aged 2.5 years old using a longitudinal study design with repeated assessments every 6 months until children are 5 years old.
Study design
- Primary purpose
- Basic science
- Allocation
- Randomised
- Intervention model
- Crossover
- Masking
- Single blind (participant)
- Number of arms
- 2
| Arm | Type | Receives |
|---|---|---|
| Food Cues | Active comparator | Behavioral: Attentional bias to food cuesAttentional bias to Food cues experimental measurement |
| Control Cues | Active comparator | Behavioral: Attentional bias to food cuesAttentional bias to food cues control measurement |
Who may qualify
- Ages
- 27 to 72 months
- Sex
- All
- Healthy volunteers
- Accepted
- Age groups
- Child
Key inclusion criteria (2 listed)
- parent must be ≥18 years old, have primary custody of their child for ≥75% of the month, comprehend verbal and written English and not plan to move out of Vermont or New Hampshire during the study timeframe.
- Children must be ≥2.25 and ≤2.99 years old at first visit and have normal or corrected-to-normal vision to enable eye tracking.
Key exclusion criteria (1 listed)
- Children with any relevant food allergies or dietary restrictions, taking medication or with a medical condition that affects appetite or attention, or with a relative enrolled in the study will be excluded.
Eligibility is decided by the study team after screening; this overview does not establish that a patient qualifies. Full inclusion and exclusion criteria.
Interventions
| Intervention | Type | Arms |
|---|---|---|
| Attentional bias to food cuesMeasurement of the amount of attention given to food cues | Behavioural | Control Cues, Food Cues |
Primary outcome
Coercive Parental Food Practices
Time frame: Measured every 6 months from baseline until 2.5 years after baseline.
Coercive Parental Food Practices will be assessed using the Child Feeding Questionnaire (CFQ) and Parental Feeding Style Questionnaire (PFSQ). The CFQ restriction subscale, with scores for each of 8 items ranging from 1 to 5 (never to always practice the behavior), will be averaged for a single final Restriction score. The 3 items of the emotional feeding domain from the PFSQ, ranging from 1 to 5 (never to always practice the behavior) will be averaged for a single final Emotional Feeding score.
Appetitive Traits
Time frame: Measured every 6 months from baseline until 2.5 years after baseline.
Child appetitive traits will be assessed via parent report using the validated Children's Eating Behavior Questionnaire (CEBQ). The CEBQ includes subscales to measure food approach and food avoidance traits. Final scores for each subscale is computed as the average across subscale items and range from 1 to 5 (never to always express that trait).
Eating in the Absence of Hunger.
Time frame: Measured every 6 months from baseline until 2.5 years after baseline.
Eating in the Absence of Hunger. Eating in the absence of hunger will be calculated using established methods (Gilbert-Diamond et al., IJO 2017; Fisher \& Birch., AM J of Clin Nutr 2002). The pre- and post-weights of each snack items will be used to calculate the number of kCals a child consumed. Increased kCal consumption is evidence of increased eating in the absence of hunger.
Adiposity
Time frame: Measured every 6 months from baseline until 2.5 years after baseline.
Adiposity in children will be operationalized as the age- and sex-adjusted BMI z-score. Child height and weight at each assessment will be measured in-person and be used to calculate age and sex-specific BMI z-scores based on WHO child growth charts. If the child is lost to follow up and we cannot obtain in-person measures, we will abstract height and weight from the child's medical records if they consented to that data collection during the baseline visit.
Results and safety
This study is still under way. Results are not available in the source record yet.
Research links
- Official record on ClinicalTrials.govLast updated by the sponsor 15 Oct 2026.
- Individual participant dataSharing planned: No
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Referral and contact
AzTrials does not enrol participants or take referrals. Contact the study team or a site listed below; they decide who can take part.
Jennifer Emond, PhD principal investigator
Dartmouth College
Diane Gilbert-Diamond, ScD principal investigator
Dartmouth College
1 site in 1 country: see every site and its status.
Questions about this trial
What is this clinical trial studying?
A study testing Attentional bias to food cues in people with Childhood Obesity, run by Trustees of Dartmouth College at 1 site in United States.
The full registered description is in the About this study section and the official record.
Who may be eligible to take part?
The sponsor lists 2 inclusion and 1 exclusion criteria. Eligibility is decided by the study team after screening, so read the full criteria and contact a listed site.
Is this clinical trial currently recruiting?
The record says: looking for participants now, as of the sponsor's last update on 15 Oct 2026. Status can change between updates, so confirm with the study contact before making plans.
Where is the study taking place?
The record lists 1 site in United States. Whether a site is taking part right now should be confirmed with that site. See every site.
What are the possible benefits and risks?
They depend on the study and the treatment, and no study can promise a benefit. The study team explains the known risks during informed consent, before anyone joins; the record itself does not list them.
Are results available for this study?
This study is still under way. Results are not available in the source record yet.
How can a doctor refer a patient or contact the research team?
Contact Jennifer Emond, PhD (1-603-646-5709, jennifer.emond@dartmouth.edu), or a site near the patient. AzTrials does not enrol participants or take referrals.
What does the primary outcome measure?
Coercive Parental Food Practices (time frame: Measured every 6 months from baseline until 2.5 years after baseline.). The study lists 4 primary outcomes in all. It is what the study was designed to measure, not a finding.
Where can I read the original study information?
Does a listing mean the treatment is approved or proven to work?
No. A listing means the study is registered. It does not show that the treatment is safe, works, or is approved by a regulator.
How often is this information updated?
AzTrials copies changed records from ClinicalTrials.gov every night and reloads the whole registry every week. The sponsor last updated this record on 15 Oct 2026.