Biased attentional processing of food cues and modification in obese individuals.

Abstract

Objective: This paper reports two experiments designed to investigate and modify biased attentional processing of food cues in obesity. Experiment 1: Experiment 1 used a dot probe task to show a food-related attentional bias in 58 obese women, relative to a comparison sample of normal weight controls. Experiment 2: Experiment 2 examined whether this bias can be modified. Using a modified dot probe task, 96 obese women were trained to attend to, or to avoid, food pictures. Attentional bias for food increased in the attend group, and decreased in the avoid group. The attentional re-training effects generalised to an independent measure of biased information processing, such that participants in the avoid group produced relatively fewer food than animal words on a subsequent word stem completion task than those in the attend group. Conclusion: The results extend the application of attentional bias modification from anxiety and addiction to obesity. They also offer potential scope for tackling pathological (over)eating.

The moderating role of state inhibitory control in the effect of evaluative conditioning on temptation and unhealthy snacking

“…The automatic basis of evaluative learning has been questioned [11], and some studies have found training effects in evaluative conditioning, and also cognitive bias modification only among individuals who are aware of the experimental contingencies (e.g., [1,16,59]). However, many other studies have shown that training effects in evaluative conditioning and cognitive bias modification are unaffected by contingency awareness (e.g., [5,[17][18][19]25,45,46]). Nevertheless, it is possible that awareness of the contingent appearance of food with either positive or negative stimuli in the current study may have influenced subsequent temptation and consumption.…”

Combined effects of cognitive bias for food cues and poor inhibitory control on unhealthy food intake

“…Each picture pair was individually matched on characteristics such as quality, brightness, and size, as well as ratings of pleasure and arousal. These ratings were obtained from a previous pilot study, in which 21 women aged 17-45 years (M = 23.67, SD = 8.28) rated 590 food and animal pictures on 9-point pleasure and arousal scales (Kemps, Tiggemann, & Hollitt, 2014). The same stimulus set was used for all three computer tasks.…”

Attentional bias modification based on visual probe task: methodological issues, results and clinical relevance

“…In the study with obese participants, AB for food increased in the attend group and decreased in the avoid group, and the effects generalized to an independent measure of attentional bias. 66 The two studies that investigated ABM for chocolate achieved the same positive outcome, as AB for chocolate cues increased in the attend group and decreased in the avoid group, and these training effects generalized to novel, previously unseen chocolate pictures. Moreover, attentional retraining affected chocolate consumption and craving, and participants in the avoid group ate less chocolate in a so-called taste test than did those in the attend group.…”

“…Six studies were identified, [62][63][64][65][66][67] and their tasks did not vary substantially, as they all a SOA of 500 ms and 12-20 pairs of food as a stimulus, although five used pictures and one used words. The three studies that compared attend and avoid groups 62,65,66 found AB changes and a significant impact of training. In the study with obese participants, AB for food increased in the attend group and decreased in the avoid group, and the effects generalized to an independent measure of attentional bias.…”

“…Smeets et al 67 Attend (+)/attend (-)/control Partly Partly Kemps et al 62 Attend/avoid Yes Yes Kemps et al 65 Attend/avoid Yes Yes Kemps et al 66 Attend/avoid Yes Partly Kakoschke et al 63 Attend (+)/attend (-) Yes Yes Boutelle et al 64 Avoid/control Yes Partly Table 2 -Summary of studies that have and have not succeeded in modifying attentional bias and its impact A plus sign (+) means positive stimuli; a minus sign (-) means negative stimuli. Significant Impact means that there was a generalization to real life events after training and that results correlated with improvement in symptoms.…”