Responsiveness to Internal Cues to Hunger among Young Children

The purpose of this study was to investigate the ability of children to sense and to respond to internal hunger cues and to determine the role certain demographic, physiologic, and environment factors played in their responses. The eating behavior of ninety‐nine children in seven day‐care centers was observed on two occasions. The children consumed morning snacks of low or high caloric density (internal cue variable), followed by standardized lunches at noon. Each child participated twice, serving as his own control. Weights of food consumed at snacks and lunches were determined. A child was considered responsive to internal cues if he modified his lunch consumption to compensate for snack calorie intake; 42 percent failed to meet this criterion. Lunch calorie consumption was significantly affected by the order of treatments and by day‐care centers, but not by age, sex, weightlheight ratio, social status, race, or number of siblings. The immediate environment was concluded to have a greater effect on eating be havior than internal cues. Children tended to eat more at lunch on the first day of the experiment, regardless of the type of snack, apparently responding to a Hawthorne effect created by the novelty of the situation. This effect is itself interpreted as an external stimulus to eat. Children exhibiting insensitivity to their internal cues and overresponsiveness to their external cues were considered at risk of developing food habits contributing to problems of control of energy balance.