Alaina Pearce

Data Curation Librarian

Assistant Librarian

University Park, PA 16802-1800
96 Curtin Road
W332 Pattee Library

About Me

I am an Assistant Data Curation Librarian and Director of the Cognitive Neuroscience of Eating and Obesity (CogNEATO) Lab in the Department of Nutritional Sciences at The Pennsylvania State University. I am also affiliated with the Center for Childhood Obesity Research, the Child Study Center, and the Center on Rural Education and Communities.

Education History

PhD, Psychology - Georgetown University - 2017

BA, Psychology, Statistics - University of Minnesota Morris - 2011

0000-0003-3157-6566

Pure Profile

Research Interests

The cogNEATO lab’s research centers on examining neurocognitive and behavioral factors that contribute to risk and resiliency for pediatric obesity. Although pediatric obesity has been associated with neurocognitive deficits, it remains unclear whether obesity (and its associated co-morbidities) are cause or consequence. It may be that some children have a profile of neurocognitive functioning that confers either resiliency to obesity or higher risk for obesity. It is also possible that obesity related co-morbidities (e.g., chronic inflammation, poor sleep, depression or anxiety) directly impact neurocognitive functioning. I hypothesize that there are 1) feed-forward neurocognitive processes that confer risk or resiliency for obesogenic behaviors and pediatric obesity, and 2) feed-back effects of the deleterious impact of excess adiposity on neurocognitive functioning that contribute to a cycle of neurocognitive difficulties and continued weight gain. My research uses an interdisciplinary approaches to address possible feed-forward and feed-back processes and relies on collaborators and training from multiple fields including statistics, developmental psychology, cognitive neuroscience, and the study of ingestive behaviors.

Publications

Data as Scholarship: A Practical Framework for Engaging Researchers in Open Science, Research DataQ, 2026

Food switching at a meal is positively associated with change in adiposity among children at high-familial risk for obesity, Appetite, 2025

Physical, behavioural, and psychosocial factors associated with childhood and adolescent obesity: a study from the United Arab Emirates, Frontiers in Pediatrics, 2025

ByteTrack: a deep learning approach for bite count and bite rate detection using meal videos in children, Frontiers in Nutrition, 2025

Switching between foods is reliably associated with intake across eating events in children, Appetite, 2024

Child eating behaviors are consistently linked to intake across meals that vary in portion size, Appetite, 2024

The Cerebellar Response to Visual Portion Size Cues Is Associated with the Portion Size Effect in Children, Nutrients, 2024

PACE: a Novel Eating Behavior Phenotype to Assess Risk for Obesity in Middle Childhood, Journal of Nutrition, 2024

Does ‘portion size’ matter? Brain responses to food and non-food cues presented in varying amounts, Appetite, 2024

Poorer inhibitory control was related to greater food intake across meals varying in portion size: A randomized crossover trial, Appetite, 2023

Switching between foods: A potential behavioral phenotype of hedonic hunger and increased obesity risk in children, Physiology and Behavior, 2023

Inter-individual differences in children's short-term energy compensation: a systematic review and meta-analysis, American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, 2023

Children with lower ratings of executive functions have a greater response to the portion size effect, Appetite, 2023

Altered neural reward processing is associated with reward-related decision-making in adolescents with severe obesity, Medical Research Archives, 2023

Loss of control eating in children is associated with altered cortical and subcortical brain structure, Frontiers in Psychology, 2023

Validation of computational models to characterize cumulative intake curves from video-coded meals, Frontiers in Nutrition, 2023

Children at high familial risk for obesity show executive functioning deficits prior to development of excess weight status, Obesity, 2023

The role of reinforcement learning and value-based decision-making frameworks in understanding food choice and eating behaviors, Frontiers in Nutrition, 2022

Heterogeneity in PFC-amygdala connectivity in middle childhood, and concurrent interrelations with inhibitory control and anxiety symptoms, Neuropsychologia, 2022

Child meal microstructure and eating behaviors: A systematic review, Appetite, 2022

Influence of exclusive breastfeeding on hippocampal structure, satiety responsiveness, and weight status, Maternal and Child Nutrition, 2022

Effects of severe obesity and sleeve gastrectomy on cortical thickness in adolescents, Obesity, 2021

Decision-Making Processes Related to Perseveration Are Indirectly Associated With Weight Status in Children Through Laboratory-Assessed Energy Intake, Frontiers in Psychology, 2021

Using association rules mining to characterize of loss of control eating in childhood, Appetite, 2021

Development and Pilot Testing of Standardized Food Images for Studying Eating Behaviors in Children, Frontiers in Psychology, 2020

Individual differences in the influence of taste and health impact successful dietary self-control: A mouse tracking food choice study in children, Physiology and Behavior, 2020

Altered neural correlates of episodic memory in adolescents with severe obesity, Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience, 2019

A biopsychosocial model of sex differences in children’s eating behaviors, Nutrients, 2019

Food commercials do not affect energy intake in a laboratory meal but do alter brain responses to visual food cues in children, Appetite, 2019

Cognitive performance as predictor and outcome of adolescent bariatric surgery: A nonrandomized pilot study, Journal of Pediatric Psychology, 2018

Executive and Reward-Related Function in Pediatric Obesity: A Meta-Analysis, Childhood Obesity, 2018