Nutrición Hospitalaria
ISSN 1699-5198 ISSN 0212-1611
VITE SIERRA, Ariel; NEGRETE CORTES, Agustín Jaime CAVITA CASTRO, Celia Alejandra. Promoting self-control in overweight and obese children. []. , 37, 2, pp.251-259. 03--2020. ISSN 1699-5198. https://dx.doi.org/10.20960/nh.02658.
Background and objective:
impulsiveness might affect the ability of an individual to plan meals, eat regularly, and resist impulses to enjoy foods that are high in fat and sugars in a particular way. The objective of the present study was to evaluate the effectiveness of a fading strategy regarding a reinforcer dimension to promote the development of self-control and decrease impulsive choice among 14 overweight and obese children.
Material and methods:
to meet this objective, an experimental procedure of choice behavior was used to evaluate the impulsivity and self-control choices influenced by four reinforcer dimensions on a computer: reinforcement rate, reinforcer quality, immediacy of the reinforcement, and response effort.
Results:
the results indicate that the children's decisions were influenced primarily by the immediacy of the reinforcement and the reinforcement rate; therefore, the children's behavior can be classified as impulsive. Based on these results, a fading procedure was implemented for self-control training in which the immediacy values of the reinforcement and other influential dimensions that devalued the reinforcer were progressively increased.
Conclusions:
after this fading strategy, a change in preference was observed among the children with regard to the proportion of alternative responses that produced high rates of reinforcement or were of higher quality compared with the allocation of choices associated with immediate reinforcement, which required less effort and were of lower quality. It is possible to design strategies regarding the development of self-control based on the contrasting qualities of these dimensions and the gradual training of tolerance of restrictions on access to the reinforcer.
: Obesity; Overweight; Impulsive behavior; Choice behavior; Child.