Why obese children cannot resist food: The role of impulsivity

Abstract

Facing the undesirable health consequences of being obese, an important question is why some people are not able to resist eating to excess. It is theorized that increased impulsivity at least partly underlies the inability to control eating behaviour; being more impulsive is supposed to make it more difficult to resist food intake. Thirty-three obese children in a residential setting and 31 lean control children are tested. Impulsivity is measured with two behavioural measures (inhibitory control and sensitivity to reward) and questionnaires. Results show that the obese children in treatment were more sensitive to reward and showed less inhibitory control than normal weight children. In addition, the obese children with eating binges were more impulsive than the obese children without eating binges. Most interesting finding was that the children that were the least effective in inhibiting responses, lost less weight in the residential treatment program. To conclude: impulsivity is a personality characteristic that potentially has crucial consequences for the development and maintenance, as well as treatment of obesity.

The interaction between impulsivity and a varied food environment: its influence on food intake and overweight

“…This is against our hypothesis that was based on the findings of Nederkoorn and colleagues. 13 A difference between the two studies is that in the present study we tested overweight children, whereas Nederkoorn and colleagues 13 tested obese children. There is some recent evidence 25 for a nonlinear relationship between reward sensitivity and BMI in adult participants, but the exact form of the relationship differs from the current findings with children.…”

“…It is a slightly adapted version of the task used by Matthys and colleagues 23 that was also used by Nederkoorn and colleagues. 13 The participant is told that he or she can earn points within this task and should try to collect as many points as possible. The participant earns a point when the door on the computer screen reveals a smiling face.…”

“…10 Insufficient prepotent response inhibition reflects a slower response of impulsive people to inhibition signals. 11,12 Despite these differences both aspects of impulsivity have been linked to obesity: Nederkoorn and colleagues 13 found that obese children were more reward sensitive and worse at prepotent response inhibition than control children. Obese adult women also appeared to be worse response inhibitors than lean controls, especially towards the end of the computer task.…”

“…Since the aspect of reward sensitivity has also been linked to obesity, 13 we expected that, besides being poor response inhibitors, the overweight children would also be more reward sensitive.…”

Cognitive deficits in obese persons with and without binge eating disorder. Investigation using a mental flexibility task

“…Some studies have explored cognitive functions in obese persons. Existing studies suggest that obese adults and children have various deficits affecting executive control, including poor inhibition (Nederkoorn, Braet, Van Eijs, Tanghe, & Jansen, 2006;Nederkoorn, Smulders, Havermans, Roefs, & Jansen, 2006) poor mental flexibility (Boeka & Lokken, 2008;Cserje´ si, Luminet, Poncelet, & L ´ena´ rd, 2009;Cserje´ si, Molnar, Luminet, & Le´ na´ rd, 2007;Gunstad et al, 2007), poor planning and problem-solving capacities (Boeka & Lokken, 2008), as well as selective and sustained attention deficits (Cournot et al, 2006;Cserje´ si et al, 2009Cserje´ si et al, , 2007. As such, they resemble bulimic patients.…”