Leann L. Birch, whose research into children’s eating habits challenged some long-held notions about finicky young diners and led to new insights on childhood nutrition and obesity, died on May 26 in Durham, N.C. She was 72.

Her daughter, Charlotte K. Newell, said the cause was cancer.

Dr. Birch, a developmental psychologist, and the researchers she worked with studied pea-hating children, coached new mothers in ways to quiet crying babies other than feeding them, and scrutinized time-honored parental practices like demanding that a child finish everything on the dinner plate. Her work found that a child’s food preferences and eating habits are formed very early, and that things parents do in the interest of good nutrition often backfire.

“Leann was a pioneer in bringing developmental psychology to the study of nutritional issues facing young children,” Jennifer Orlet Fisher, who studied under Dr. Birch at Penn State University and is now associate director of the Center for Obesity Research and Education at Temple University, said by email. “Her research moved the science of nutrition beyond its narrow focus on foods and nutrients to consider why children eat and how eating habits are established in early life.”

Dr. Birch’s research — at the University of Illinois, Penn State and, most recently, the University of Georgia — has frequently been cited in scholarly journals and government reports. She was the chairwoman of several committees on childhood obesity and published more than 200 scholarly articles.