Efeito de Instruções e de Monitoramento sobre as Escolhas Alimentares em Crianças com IMC Normal e Acima do Normal

Abstract

The present study aims to observe the effect of verbal social variables and nonverbal social variables on dietary choice behaviour in children with normal and above normal body mass index (BMI). Six children, students from a school in Goiânia, Brazil, aged seven to ten years, of whom three had normal BMI and three had a BMI above normal, participated in this study. Participants were submitted to all the experimental phases: Baseline one with and without monitoring; instruction without consequence with and without monitoring; Baseline two with and without monitoring; instruction with consequences with and without monitoring; and Baseline three with and without monitoring. From the data, it was observed that instructions specifying only the response to be emitted are more likely to be followed by participants with normal BMI (independent of monitoring) and that instructions describing the behavior and its consequences may change the choice in participants with normal and above normal BMI, this also independent of the monitoring done. In addition, instructions describing responses and their consequences can change the time of food consumption, both in monitoring condition and in unmonitored conditions. For future studies, it is suggested to investigate the role of instructions in the time of consumption and the design of applied research that considers the findings of the present study in evaluations with children above normal weight