Effort expenditure for rewards task modified for food: A novel behavioral measure of willingness to work for food

Abstract

Objective: Binge eating and associated eating disorders are characterized by abnormalities in reward processing. One component of reward is willingness to expend effort to obtain a reinforcer. The Effort Expenditure for Rewards Task (EEfRT) is a widely used behavioral measure of willingness to work for money. We sought to modify the EEfRT to examine willingness to work for food reward and to preliminarily examine the association between binge eating and effort expenditure for food.Method: Participants were 63 females recruited to span the spectrum of binge-eating severity.The modified EEfRT required participants to make a series of choices between an easier, low-reward option (one portion of food) and a harder, high-reward option (between two to five portions of food). Each trial also varied on probability of winning.Results: Participants self-reported engagement in the task, working hard at easy and hard tasks, and making choices based on reward probability and magnitude. As with the original EEfRT, probability, reward magnitude, and their interaction predicted the likelihood of choosing the hard task. Across two different measures, binge-eating symptoms interacted with reward magnitude, such that those with high binge eating used reward magnitude more to make trial choices than those with low binge eating.Discussion: These data provide initial support for the validity of the EEfRT modified for food as a behavioral measure of willingness to work for food reward. The impact of binge eating on effort expenditure must be replicated in samples of patients with eating disorders.

Delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol reduces willingness to exert effort in women

“…The neural circuitry underlying primary and secondary reward does seem to differ (Sescousse et al 2013 ), suggesting they could be differently influenced by pharmacological manipulations. Future human behavioral pharmacology studies should consider contrasting effects of drugs on standard money-based effort tasks with directly parallel tasks that use food rewards (Racine et al 2019 ).…”

Examining the reliability and validity of two versions of the Effort-Expenditure for Rewards Task (EEfRT)

“…Barch et al [33] completely removed the low probability of reward attainment category, Damiano et al [38] removed the time limit when participants select either the easy or the hard task, Fervaha et al [32] calculated an individual number of required clicks before the actual task based on motoric abilities, and Byrne & Ghaiumy Anaraky [52] introduced "loss trials", in which choosing the easy task leads to potentially higher monetary loss compared to the hard task. Other authors exchanged the monetary rewards of the EEfRT, e.g., by using food portions in a study with patients suffering from binge-eating [50]. A different study added a social influence aspect while participants chose between the easy and hard task of the EEfRT by adding pictures of "peers" and their respective choices [47].…”

“…For instance, future work might use a range of tasks or a range of variations of the EEfRT and calculate scales comparable to questionnaires assessing personality traits. The EEfRT offers a solid foundation to probe other forms of "costs" (e.g., the C-EEfRT which uses cognitive costs) [51] and a variety of different "benefits" (e.g., food portions) [50].…”

Portraying Humans as Machines to Promote Health: Unintended Risks, Mechanisms, and Solutions

“…We again had participants describe the digestive system in 100 words based on the image they saw, to reinforce the manipulation and ensure attention to the stimulus (Gino, Kouchaki, and Galinsky 2015;Smith et al 2008). In addition to ensuring attention, this approach also enabled us to register the amount of time spent on writing (Kellogg 1987), to assess whether any condition evoked greater effort than others (which could lead to unhealthier choices because of perceived reward entitlement; Racine et al 2019).…”