Fellowship for Amanda Crandall: An Investigation of the Effects of Food Scarcity on Reinforcement Pathology among Parents and Offspring

Project Summary/Abstract As obesity continues to rise in the United States, it is critically important to identify and understand important risk factors for this condition. Experiences of poverty predict obesity in both adults and children and childhood poverty independently increases one's risk for adult obesity. The proposed study will investigate the effect of scarcity on the relative reinforcing value (RRV) of food, delay discounting (DD), and examine stress as a potential mediator. A pilot study in our laboratory established that acute impressions of food scarcity increase RRV of food among adults. This study also showed that males and females suffering from severe food insecurity tended to work harder for the food when primed for limited resources. The study in the current proposal will replicate and extend these findings with a particular focus on the development of obesity by pursuing four specific aims. We will examine a cross section of children, adolescents, and their parents, with all groups having a balanced number of minority participants and sexes. The study will investigate differential reactions to scarcity in terms of food reinforcement at each age group and allow us to establish which period of development is most sensitive to the paradigm as well as the impact of parents' reactions to scarcity on offspring RRV and DD. We will examine the acute effects of financial scarcity on RRV of food and delay discounting among participants with and without chronic financial scarcity (i.e. receiving government assistance) in a laboratory study. Participants will be screened for receipt of government assistance by any person in the household in the last year and recruited in a stratified sample. In the laboratory, they will undergo a scarcity manipulation and complete tasks measuring RRV of food, and DD. It is predicted that when primed for scarcity, participants with chronic financial scarcity will show a greater increase in RRV of food and DD. This relationship is expected to strengthen across the lifespan. It is also predicted that adolescent-parent dyads will be the most interrelated in terms of reactions to scarcity. Finally, we will explore stress as a potential mechanism for these relationships. It is predicted that participants with chronic scarcity will be more likely to have a higher stress response to scarcity and that those who do will show a corresponding increase in DD. Overall, the proposed study is likely to elucidate the mechanisms underlying the childhood poverty-adult obesity relationship and provide valuable information for interventions in this area.