Implicit weight bias in children age 9 to 11 years

OBJECTIVES: Assess implicit weight bias in children 9 to 11 years old. METHODS: Implicit weight bias was measured in children ages 9 to 11 (N = 114) by using the Affect Misattribution Procedure. Participants were shown a test image of a child for 350 milliseconds followed by a meaningless fractal (200 milliseconds), and then they were asked to rate the fractal image as "good" or "bad." We used 9 image pairs matched on age, race, sex, and activity but differing by weight of the child. Implicit bias was the difference between positive ratings for fractals preceded by an image of a healthy-weight child and positive ratings for fractals preceded by an image of an overweight child. RESULTS: On average, 64% of fractals shown after pictures of healthy-weight children were rated as "good, " compared with 59% of those shown after pictures of overweight children, reflecting an overall implicit bias rate of 5.4% against overweight children (P < .001). Healthy-weight participants showed greater implicit bias than over-and underweight participants (7.9%, 1.4%, and 0.3% respectively; P = .049). CONCLUSIONS: Implicit bias toward overweight individuals is evident in children aged 9 to 11 years with a magnitude of implicit bias (5.4%) similar to that in studies of implicit racial bias among adults

Influence of product placement in children's movies on children's snack choices

Background Media exposure affects health, including obesity risk. Children's movies often contain food placements—frequently unhealthy foods. However, it is not known if these cues influence children's food choices or consumption after viewing. We explored whether children's snack choices or consumption differs based on: 1) recent exposure to movies with high versus low product placement of unhealthy foods; and 2) children's weight status. Methods Children ages 9–11 were assigned to watch a high (“Alvin and the Chipmunks,” n = 54) or low (“Stuart Little,” n = 60) product-placement movie. After viewing, participants selected a snack choice from each of five categories, several of which were specifically featured in “Alvin.” Uneaten snacks from each participant were weighed upon completion. Snack choice and amount consumed by movie were compared by t-tests, and differences in snack choices by movie were tested with logistic regression. Results Participants consumed an average of 800.8 kcal; mean kcal eaten did not vary by movie watched. Participants who watched the high product-placement movie had 3.1 times the odds (95% CI 1.3–7.2) of choosing cheese balls (most featured snack) compared to participants who watched the low product-placement movie. Children who were overweight or obese consumed a mean of 857 kcal (95% CI: 789–925) compared to 783 kcal (95% CI: 742–823, p = 0.09) for children who were underweight or healthy weight. Children's weight status did not significantly affect their choice of snack. Conclusions Branding and obesogenic messaging in children's movies influenced some choices that children made about snack foods immediately following viewing, especially food with greatest exposure time in the film, but did not affect total calories consumed. Future studies should examine how the accumulation of these messages affects children's long-term food choices

The body behind music: precedents and prospects

Psychology of Music is the official journal of SEMPRE – Society for Education, Music and Psychology Research. This paper acknowledges that the involvement of the body in musical experiences is a phenomenon that has been noted since ancient times - many authors cite the organic rhythms of the body as providing the experiential basis for musical rhythm - whereas the input of bodily experiences to the comprehension of music has recently been investigated by various researchers in music theory. This concern is central in multidisciplinary terms to performing arts research at Middlesex. A similar interest in the bodily basis of music is also seen in studies of expressive music performance. I argue here that the roots of the recent research on the bodily basis of expression in performance are to be found in 19th-century theories of performance, which took shape in the light of the newly rising science of psychology. The rise of scientific psychology from within experimental physiology of the period gave 19th-century theories concerning the workings of the human mind a decisively embodied character. The article refers particularly to the works of Ernst Mach, and Christian von Ehrenfels, and argues that the proposals made and the conclusions reached in early studies of expressive performance involve all the essential hypotheses put forward in recent research. It identifies two basic models for musical rhythm that could provide the basis for expressive performance: the model of upbeat-accent-afterbeat, and the model of repose-action-repose. It is conceivable that the first model can account for the local expressive fluctuations in performance, while the second one can explain the global expressive profile