An observational study in Eating Behavior, sponsored by Pennington Biomedical Research Center. Recruiting at 1 site in United States. Open to participants aged 8 Years to 12 Years, including healthy volunteers. Per ClinicalTrials.gov, last updated 2026-06-11.
Sponsored by Pennington Biomedical Research Center · Observational
This study will test the validity and feasibility of an smartwatch-based system to detect eating and drinking events in both laboratory and free-living conditions.
The study will: 1) determine whether the smartwatch-based system accurately detects eating events in child-parent dyads in controlled settings and 2) evaluate the feasibility and practicality of passively detecting eating events in child-parent dyads over 3 days in free-living settings. The study will include two phases. During the laboratory visit, child-parent dyads will wear the smartwatch on their dominant hand and perform activities including eating gestures. These activities will be recorded with a video camera, and the videos will be coded for the ground truth times of eating. In the second phase of the study, child-parent dyads will continue wearing the smartwatch for 3 more days in free-living conditions. In the free-living period, parents will receive personalized Ecological Momentary Assessment (EMA) prompts reminding them to activate the smartwatch.
985 studies on the registry are indexed under Feeding Behavior; 178 are open to participants now.
This study's planned enrollment of 35 is below the median of 183 across 270 observational studies indexed under Feeding Behavior.
Browse Feeding Behavior studies →Pennington Biomedical Research Center is the lead sponsor of 284 studies on the registry; 31 are open to participants now.
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A sample of 35 dyads (35 parents and their 8-12 years old children) will be recruited from the Baton Rouge, LA area.
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Exclusion Criteria:
Participants (child-parent dyads) will wear a smartwatch on their dominant hand during a laboratory session and for three days in free-living conditions. In the lab, dyads will perform eating-related activities (e.g., eating with utensils, eating with hands, drinking) and non-eating activities (e.g., walking, writing, brushing teeth) while being video recorded for ground truth validation. Parents will receive a 20-minute training on using Ecological Momentary Assessment (EMA) prompts to record meal and snack times and will respond to EMA reminders during the free-living period. Adherence will be monitored through smartwatch wear time and EMA response rates.
Accuracy and Performance of Smartwatch-based Eating Detection System in Controlled Conditions
Accuracy and performance of smartwatch-based system for detecting eating and drinking events compared to video-coded ground truth during a controlled laboratory conditions. Metrics include: Precision (proportion of correctly detected eating events among all detected events), Recall/Sensitivity (proportion of actual eating events detected), Specificity (proportion of non-eating events correctly identified as non-eating) F1-score (harmonic mean of precision and recall), Overall accuracy (proportion of correct classification).
Time frame: During the controlled laboratory session (Day 1).
Adherence to Smartwatch Protocol
Proportion of families meeting adherence criteria, defined as both parent and child wearing the smartwatch during eating on at least 2 of 3 days and the parent responding to ≥75% of EMA prompts related to smartwatch charging and app functionality.
Time frame: During the free-living phase (Days 2-4).
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