To investigate whether obese women can compensate for sucrose added to the diet when it is given blind, rather than gaining weight or exhibiting dysfunctional regulation of intake, in the present study, forty-one healthy obese (BMI 30–35 kg/m2) women (age 20–50 years), not currently dieting, were randomly assigned to consume sucrose (n 20) or aspartame (n 21) drinks over 4 weeks in a parallel single-blind design. Over the 4 weeks, one group consumed 4 × 250 ml sucrose drinks (total 1800 kJ/d) and the other group consumed 4 × 250 ml aspartame drinks. During the baseline week and experimental weeks, body weight and other biometric data were measured and steps per day, food intake using 7 d unweighed food diaries, and mood using ten- or seven-point Likert scales four times a day were recorded. At the end of the experiment, the participants weighed 1·72 (se 0·47) kg less than the value predicted by the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases (NIDDK) model; the predicted body weight accounted for 94·3 % of the variance in the observed body weight and experimental group accounted for a further 1·1 % of the variance in the observed body weight, showing that women consuming sucrose drinks gained significantly less weight than predicted. The reported daily energy intake did not increase significantly, and sucrose supplements significantly reduced the reported voluntary sugar, starch and fat intake compared with aspartame. There were no effects on appetite or mood. Over 4 weeks, as part of everyday eating, sucrose given blind in soft drinks was partially compensated for by obese women, as in previous experiments with healthy and overweight participants.

No abstract

In two experiments we examined whether the allocation of attention in natural scene viewing is influenced by the gaze cues (head and eye direction) of an individual appearing in the scene. Each experiment employed a variant of the flicker paradigm in which alternating versions of a scene and a modified version of that scene were separated by a brief blank field. In Experiment 1, participants were able to detect the change made to the scene sooner when an individual appearing in the scene was gazing at the changing object than when the individual was absent, gazing straight ahead, or gazing at a nonchanging object. In addition, participants’ ability to detect change deteriorated linearly as the changing object was located progressively further from the line of regard of the gazer. Experiment 2 replicated this change detection advantage of gaze-cued objects in a modified procedure using more critical scenes, a forced-choice change/no-change decision, and accuracy as the dependent variable. These findings establish that in the perception of static natural scenes and in a change detection task, attention is preferentially allocated to objects that are the target of another's social attention.

Caregivers of a child with a neurodevelopmental disability are more vulnerable to mental health difficulties. These difficulties are influenced by the child’s challenging behaviours, and the caregiver’s coping strategies; factors impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic. An online mixed methods survey was conducted on caregivers of children with neurodevelopmental disabilities (n = 43) and children who are typically developing (n = 67). The results showed that presence of challenging behaviours related to neurodevelopmental disability, and caregiver coping strategies predicted caregiver psychological distress during lockdown. Themes that emerged included ‘confusing messages and guidance’, ‘loss of freedom’ and ‘unsupported and forgotten’. The results demonstrate the pressing need for the implementation of appropriate support to protect the mental health of caregivers across the UK.

It is well established that children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) show impaired understanding of others and deficits within social functioning. However, it is still unknown whether self-processing is related to these impairments and to what extent self impacts social functioning and communication. Using an ownership paradigm, we show that children with ASD and chronological-and verbal-age-matched typically developing (TD) children do show the self-referential effect in memory. In addition, the self-bias was dependent on symptom severity and socio-communicative ability. Children with milder ASD symptoms were more likely to have a high self-bias, consistent with a low attention to others relative to self. In contrast, severe ASD symptoms were associated with reduced self-bias, consistent with an 'absent-self' hypothesis. These findings indicate that deficits in self-processing may be related to impairments in social cognition for those on the lower end of the autism spectrum.