BACKGROUND Food presentations within media content are often made responsible for todays' obesity epidemic. This assessment is based on the assumption that food presentations create cue reactivity, which in turn affects the amount of food intake. OBJECTIVE This study investigates children's implicit reactions (cue reactivity) toward healthy, unhealthy, and non‐ediblel objects. METHODS We conducted an experimental eye‐tracking study comparing children's cue reactivity assessed with visual attention toward healthy and unhealthy food presentations, as well as non‐edible objects. We controlled for the role of children's hunger, body mass index (BMI), and age. RESULTS Results indicated no difference between healthy and unhealthy food presentations, yet food generally aroused more visual attention in children compared to non‐edible objects. Explicit memory for the embedded foods or objects was mediated through visual attention. However, unhealthy food presentations also directly affected children's explicit memory. CONCLUSIONS Compared to non‐edible objects, food presentations seem to be eye‐catchers that immediately grab children's attention and they are also able to maintain this attention. Yet, for unhealthy food presentations, memory seems to be less dependent on visual attention. That is, compared to healthy products or non‐edible objects, unhealthy food presentations do not require the same amount of visual attention in order to be remembered.

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Abstract. Background: An adequate reaction from families, friends, and colleagues who can provide help to suicidal individuals is a preventive factor. Despite the logical assumption that the mere presence of risk factors in individuals needing help may affect others' helping intentions, empirical evidence is lacking in this regard. Method: We tested whether the presence of various risk factors influences the intention to provide help to suicidal individuals. Individuals ( N = 890) were exposed to a vignette in which they were asked to imagine meeting a distant acquaintance. Such persons talk about serious problems and suddenly use the word “suicide.” In a one-factorial between-subjects design with 21 groups, we manipulated person-related attributes corresponding to risk factors for suicide. Results: Some attributes increased helping intentions: male gender, very young and old age, homosexuality and transsexuality, terminal illness, previous nonsuicidal self-injury, previous suicide attempt, and seeking out lethal means. However, some attributes did not: female gender, major depression, chronic pain, different stressful life events, previously experienced violence, a family history of suicide, and a cry for help. Limitations: We measured self-reported behavioral intentions. Conclusions: Although people seem to adapt their helping intentions in response to some attributes, there seem to be many blind spots.

COVID-19 is a news issue that can be covered from many different angles. When reporting, journalists have to select, accentuate, or exclude particular aspects, which, in turn, may evoke a specific, and possibly constricted, perspective in viewers, a phenomenon termed the news-framing effect. Guided by the reinforcing spiral framework, we conducted a multi-study project that investigated the news-framing effect’s underlying mechanism by studying the dynamic of self-reinforcing effects. Grounded in a real-life framing environment observed during the pandemic and systematically assessed via a content analysis (study 1) and survey (study 2), we offer supporting evidence for a preference-based reinforcement model by utilizing a combination of the selective exposure (i.e., self-selected exposure) and causal effects (i.e., forced exposure) paradigms within one randomized controlled study (study 3). Self-selection of news content by viewers was a necessary precondition for frame-consistent (reinforcement) effects. Forced exposure did not elicit causal effects in a frame-consistent direction.