A biopsychosocial approach to investigating appetite self-regulation in children: The role of temperament in developmental trajectories, parent-child interactions, and brain activation

Appetite self-regulation (ASR) emerges in early childhood and continues to develop into middle childhood, with long-term implications for health and well-being. Its development is shaped by the interplay between individual biological and psychological characteristics and external socio-environmental influences, which together guide children’s tendencies to approach or withdraw from food. While ASR is often considered a domain-specific manifestation of general self-regulation, distinguishing the regulation of food intake from broader regulatory processes remains crucial for understanding its unique developmental pathways. A more nuanced understanding of ASR requires examination of how its development is shaped by children’s temperamental reactivity and regulatory capacity across homeostatic and hedonic motivational systems in response to environmental cues. Guided by the Biopsychosocial Pathways Model of Appetite Self-Regulation, this dissertation investigated how early temperamental traits influence the development of ASR, children’s susceptibility to caregiver-child mealtime interactions, and neural responses to socioemotional and food cues. Participants include children and families participating in the STRONG Kids 2 longitudinal birth cohort study (N = 468). Study 1 used latent growth modeling to examine how temperament predicts trajectories of food approach and withdrawal behaviors from 18 to 36 months. Negative affectivity predicted higher initial levels of both behaviors. Surgency was associated with a higher baseline level of food approach and a slower growth trajectory, while effortful control predicted a lower initial food approach and less pronounced increases over time. Study 2 explored the moderating effects of child temperament on the association between caregiver-child dyadic synchrony, assessed using both Mutually Responsive Orientation (MRO) and Motion Energy Analysis (MEA), and ASR outcomes. This study included a subsample of caregiver-child dyads observed during mealtimes at 18–24 months (n = 109). Findings showed that surgency and orienting/regulation moderated the association between caregiver-child interaction and both food approach and withdrawal behaviors, while negative affectivity had a direct association with food withdrawal. Study 3 assessed neural and behavioral responses to food and emotional stimuli using a shift-attention paradigm with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and eye-tracking among children aged 6–10 years (n = 26). Focusing attention on negative emotional faces and unhealthy food cues elicited greater activation in emotion and reward-related regions, whereas shifting attention away from these emotionally salient components toward the neutral elements of the background engaged regulatory control regions. Activation in these regulatory regions varied by child temperament, suggesting differential engagement of top-down control mechanisms based on individual differences. Moreover, shifting attention away from the emotional components of the stimuli produced distinct regulatory outcomes for emotional versus food content, indicating that the effectiveness of attention modulation may be content-specific. Together, these studies highlight that ASR development is embedded in a complex interplay of temperament, caregiver-child relational dynamics, and neural regulatory processes. The findings support the Biopsychosocial Pathways Model of ASR and emphasize the importance of tailoring interventions and practices to align with individual differences in children’s temperamental characteristics.

Name thesis:degree_name

Ph.D.

Level thesis:degree_level

Dissertation

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Human Dvlpmt & Family Studies

Grantor

University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

Year dc:date

2025

Author dc:creator

• Ju, Sehyun

Contributors dc:contributor

• Bost, Kelly
• Donovan, Sharon
• Dolcos, Sanda
• McElwain, Nancy
• Tu, Kelly

• Appetite Self-regulation
• Temperament
• Caregiver-child Interaction
• Dyadic Synchrony
• Mutually Responsive Orientation
• Motion Energy Analysis
• Eating Behaviors
• Food Approach
• Food Withdrawal
• Emotion Regulation
• Fmri

Statement dc:rights

• Copyright 2025 Sehyun Ju

Language dc:language

en, eng

Handle dc:identifier

https://hdl.handle.net/2142/130083

OAI record oai:identifier

https://www.ideals.illinois.edu/oai-pmh?verb=GetRecord&metadataPrefix=etdms&identifier=oai%3Awww.ideals.illinois.edu%3A2142%2F130083