Prediction of children ’ s obesity based on inhibition , anxiety and mother - child

Obesity means increase of excess body fat and increase of children’s weight is the result of interaction between genetic and environmental factors. Activation of behavioral and inhibitory system that occupies an important role in the emergence of negative emotional and affective experience is deficient in individuals with different disorders. Child’s anxiety is caused as the result of the threat that is addressed to the child or lack of individuals or things that provide the child with feelings peace and security. On the other hand, some scientists define attachment to mother as the controlling and organizing system of behavior. As we know, overweight children are considered as lovable and cute particularly in Iranian culture, but obesity in children is known as one of the world’s hygienic problems. Therefore, the present research aims to predict children’s obesity based on inhibition, anxiety and mother-child relationship. The sample of the research comprises 124 students (female=92, male=32) who were selected based on Morgan sampling table and through multistratified sampling. Stroop test, Goodenough test, recording the observations and mother-child relationship questionnaires were carried out to gather the data. Findings indicated that, linear relationship between the components of Stroop test (behavioral inhibition) and children’s obesity is significant. Moreover, anxiety is a positive predictor of obesity in children and the relationship between the scores of anxiety and the scores of body mass index (BMI) is bilateral. Furthermore, mother-child relationship exerts significant effect on children’s obesity and with the increase of scores in the subscale of negligence, obesity increases. There’s also significant relationship between behavioral inhibition and anxiety in children, mother-child relationship and anxiety in children. Overall, children’s obesity can be prevented through generalizing the sample to other areas, attracting maternal confidence in more effective methods, carrying out similar studies on the mother-child relationship, investigating the factors that trigger the anxiety in children and recognition of effective factors such as inhibition in children’s obesity.