Publications by authors named "Rocco A Paluch"

Background: Individuals with obesity tend to discount the future (delay discounting), focusing on immediate gratification. Delay discounting is reliably related to indicators of economic scarcity (i.e.

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The early language environment, especially high-quality, contingent parent-child language interactions, is crucial for a child's language development and later academic success. In this secondary analysis study, 89 parent-child dyads were randomly assigned to either the Music Together® (music) or play date (control) classes. Children were 9- to 15-month old at baseline, primarily white (86.

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Food insecurity, defined as unpredictable access to food that may not meet a person's nutritional needs, is paradoxically associated with higher BMI (kg/m) and obesity. Research has shown delay discounting, a behavioral economic measure of the preference for immediate rather than delayed rewards, is related to higher BMI, and moderates the relationship between income and food insecurity. Based on this research, we used regression models to test whether delay discounting, consideration of future consequences, and perceived stress were atemporal mediators of the food insecurity-BMI relation in 313 mothers, controlling for demographic variables.

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Background: Research has shown that early exposure to added sugars from table food is related to increased intake of added sugars in later childhood. The earliest window of exposure to added sugars may be in infancy via infant formula. However, beyond the well-established factors of maternal lifestyle and modeling, there is a lack of research examining how exposure to added sugars from infant formula influences infant/toddler added sugar intakes from table foods and sugar sweetened beverages (SSB).

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Importance: Intensive behavioral interventions for childhood overweight and obesity are recommended by national guidelines, but are currently offered primarily in specialty clinics. Evidence is lacking on their effectiveness in pediatric primary care settings.

Objective: To evaluate the effects of family-based treatment for overweight or obesity implemented in pediatric primary care on children and their parents and siblings.

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Background: Parent-child interactions are linked to childhood obesity. Music enrichment programs enhance parent-child interactions and may be a strategy for early childhood obesity prevention.

Objective: We implemented a 2-year randomized, controlled trial to assess the effects of a music enrichment program (music, n = 45) vs.

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Objective: Insulin resistance is associated with elevated activation of food reward, which should be associated with an increased reinforcing value of food. Research has also shown that sugar is a macronutrient strongly associated with reward and reinforcing value of food. This research is designed to assess whether insulin resistance is associated with a stronger preference for sugar-sweetened, thus elevating blood glucose responses in obese people with varying degrees of insulin resistance.

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Intake of added sugars during early life is associated with poor health outcomes. Maternal dietary intake influences the intake of their children, but little research investigates the relationship between maternal sugar sweetened beverage (SSB) and infant/toddler added sugar intakes. Our objective was to explore the relationship between maternal total sugars and SSB intakes and infant/toddler added sugar intakes.

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Background: Food reinforcement or one's motivation to eat may be established early in life; it might not be the food reinforcement per se that drives weight gain, but rather the imbalance between food and nonfood reinforcement.

Objectives: We implemented a 2-y randomized, controlled trial to assess the effects of a music enrichment program (music, n = 45) compared with an active play date control (control, n = 45) in 9- to 15-mo-old healthy infants who were strongly motivated to eat.

Methods: The 12-mo intensive intervention phase included 4 semesters of Music Together® or a play date program (Winter, Spring, Summer, and Fall), comprised of once per week group meetings, followed by a 12-mo maintenance phase with monthly meetings.

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Background: Current dietary guidelines recommend avoiding foods and beverages with added sugars and higher sodium before age 2 years.

Objective: The aim was to describe daily snack food intake (frequency and total energy) and the associations with overconsumed nutrients (added sugars, sodium, and saturated fats) and child weight-for-length z scores.

Design: A cross-sectional, secondary analysis of baseline data from an ongoing longitudinal intervention was conducted.

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Purpose: Medication nonadherence is prevalent in diabetic populations, with "forgetting" a commonly cited reason. This issue of forgetfulness is due, in part, to a failure of prospective memory (PM). Episodic future thinking (EFT) has been shown to improve PM but has not been used to improve medication adherence.

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People with prediabetes are at risk for type 2 diabetes. They may discount the future delay discounting (DD), and not engage in preventive health behaviors. Episodic future thinking (EFT) can reduce DD when future scenarios are cued, but research is needed to assess long-term effects of EFT and when EFT is not cued.

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Article Synopsis
  • Parental obesity, particularly a mother's pre-pregnancy BMI, is linked to higher added sugar consumption in infants, which contributes to rapid weight gain.
  • The study involved 141 mother-infant pairs, revealing that higher pre-pregnancy BMI correlates with increased added sugar intake in infants and impacts their growth percentiles.
  • Shorter breastfeeding duration intensified the link between added sugar intake and infant weight gain, suggesting that maternal health and feeding practices play crucial roles in preventing obesity in offspring.
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Objective: The biomedical research community has long recognized that much of the basic research being conducted, whether in the biological, behavioral or social sciences, is not readily translated into clinical and public health applications. This translational gap is due in part to challenges inherent in moving research findings from basic or discovery research to applied research that addresses clinical or public health problems. In the behavioral and social sciences, research designs typically used in the early phases of translational research are small, underpowered "pilot" studies that may lack sufficient statistical power to test the research question of interest.

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Early childhood eating behaviors and temperament have been linked to excess weight gain in separate lines of research. However, the interplay among these variables along with maternal prepregnancy body mass index (BMI) in predicting rapid weight gain is poorly understood. This observational study tested superfactors of early childhood temperament using the and their relationships with eating behavior using the on rapid weight gain among 9-18 months children ( = 283).

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Delay Discounting (DD) or devaluing a future, larger reward in favour of a smaller, more immediate reward, has been linked to negative health behaviours. One intervention that reduces DD is Episodic Future Thinking (EFT). EFT has participants generate cues representing positive future events that correspond to temporal windows during the DD task.

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Background: Formulas often contain high amounts of added sugars, though little research has studied their connection to obesity.

Objectives: This study assessed the contribution of added sugars from formulas during complementary feeding on total added sugar intakes, and the association between these sugars and upward weight-for-age percentile (WFA%) crossing (i.e.

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Conventional randomized clinical trials (RCTs) compare treatment effectiveness to provide support for evidence-based treatments that can be generalized to the average patient. However, the information obtained from RCTs may not always be useful for selecting the best treatment for individual patients. This article presents a complementary approach to identifying optimized treatments using experimental designs that focus on individuals.

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The present study sought to determine if episodic future thinking (EFT) can decrease delay discounting (DD) and demand for fast food under simulations of economic scarcity in adults at risk for diabetes (i.e., overweight/obese and with hemoglobin A1c values in, or approaching, the prediabetic range).

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Background: Consumption of added sugars is linked to excess adiposity in older age groups and breastfeeding has been shown to protect against later obesity.

Objectives: This investigation aimed to determine whether intake of added sugars associates with rapid weight gain in individuals under 2 years of age, if intake of added sugars associates with breastfeeding duration, and how both influence body weight.

Methods: A cross-sectional analysis of data from three 24-hours dietary recalls collected from 141 infants/toddlers (age 11.

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Objective: This study aimed to determine if episodic future thinking (EFT) can decrease delay discounting (DD) among adults with prediabetes both in and out of the laboratory. DD measures how much the value of a reinforcer decreases as a function of the delay to receive it.

Methods: Adults with prediabetes (n = 67) completed a three-session study.

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Background: The rate of habituation to food and reinforcing value of food are processes that are related to food intake and body weight. Reinforcing value of food provides an index of the motivation to eat, while habituation provides an index on how repeated presentations of food relate to reduced behavioral and physiological responses to that food.

Objective: To investigate the relationship between habituation phenotypes to salty, sweet and savory foods and reinforcing value of those foods.

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Background: Individual differences in appetitive traits present in the first few weeks of life. Research has shown that infants with a greater food reinforcement ratio (FRR) have higher obesity risk. To date, limited work has examined the relation between FRR and appetitive traits of infants, and how FRR relates to appetitive traits and obesity development.

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The majority of people with prediabetes transition to type 2 diabetes. Research has suggested that persons with type 2 diabetes are likely to discount the future and focus on immediate rewards. This study was designed to assess whether this process of delay discounting (DD) is associated with glycemic regulation, medication adherence and eating and exercise behaviors in adults with prediabetes.

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Objective: This study aimed to understand the protective role of positive mother-infant interactions in the context of food and nonfood behaviors against obesity risk later in life among a cohort of low-income children at high prenatal risk due to maternal substance use during pregnancy.

Methods: The sample consisted of 216 mother-infant dyads (49% boys) participating in an ongoing longitudinal study. Mother-infant interactions during a feeding episode and a free-play task were measured at child age 1 and 7 months, respectively.

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