A new University of Illinois study finds that obese children are slower than healthy-weight children to recognize when they have made an error and correct it.
April 1/Urbana, Ill./University of Illinois -- A new University of Illinois study finds that obese children are slower than healthy-weight children to recognize when they have made an error and correct it. The research is the first to show that weight status not only affects how quickly children react to stimuli but also impacts the level of activity that occurs in the cerebral cortex during action monitoring.
“I like to explain action monitoring this way: when you’re typing, you don’t have to be looking at your keyboard or your screen to realize that you’ve made a keystroke error. That’s because action monitoring is occurring in your brain’s prefrontal cortex,” said Charles Hillman, a U of I professor of kinesiology and faculty member in the U of I’s Division of Nutritional Sciences.