Foraging minds in modern environments: High-calorie and savory-taste biases in human food spatial memory

Vries, Rachelle de; Vet, Emely de; Graaf, Kees de; Boesveldt, Sanne

doi:10.1016/j.appet.2020.104718

Cited by 20 publications

(71 citation statements)

References 54 publications

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“…Two experiments sought to explore the existence of a mnemonic bias towards highcalorie food stimuli. Attentional biases to high-calorie food stimuli have previously been reported (Hagan et al, 2020;Mogg et al, 1998) and there are also mnemonic biases towards remembering the consumption and location (de Vries et al, 2020;New et al, 2007) of high-calorie foods. A bias towards high-calorie food stimuli could also facilitate the incentive value of food cues, thus resulting in overconsumption (Berridge et al, 2010).…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 87%

Is there a memory bias for high calorie food images?

Bm¹,

Equita²,

Aj³

et al. 2020

Preprint

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It is unclear if, and to what extent, the human memory system is biased towards food and food relevant stimuli. Drawing upon existing demonstrations of attentional biases to high calorie food images, and findings that evolutionarily relevant stimuli are preferentially remembered, we hypothesized that images of high calorie foods would be better remembered than images of low calorie foods and nonfood items. Investigating this is important because a general bias towards remembering high calorie images might facilitate greater incentive learning towards these images which could result in cue-induced overconsumption. We tested this in two pre-registered, within-subject studies (ns = 38). In Experiment 1, using a rapid stream visual presentation procedure and recognition memory test, we found no effect of image type (high calorie, low calorie, nonfood) on recognition for previously seen images (F < 1.0). However, we did observe fewer correct rejections (i.e. more false memories) for novel low calorie images. In Experiment 2, we used a longer encoding procedure and free recall memory test and similarly failed to observe an effect of image type on recall (F < 1.0). We did discover several other factors that correlate with image memory which we discuss along with the implications of these results and directions for future research.

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 87%

Is there a memory bias for high calorie food images?

Bm¹,

Equita²,

Aj³

et al. 2020

Preprint

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…protein to carbohydrate and fat ratios), rendering it unlikely that differences in nutritional balance -rather than caloric content -is what drove the mnemonic advantage in the high-calorie condition 16 . However, the observation that (odor) familiarity predicted a higher frequency of overall correct relocations illustrates the importance of considering both content-sensitive and content-insensitive learning processes for human spatial cognition 5 .…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Food odors were matched on perceived intensity (i.e. 55-75 mm on a 100 mm Visual Analogue Scale) between caloric density-taste conditions and validated in previous research 5 . Food products were placed in bowls and refilled at regular time intervals to maintain a consistent presentation volume.…”

Section: Spatial Memory Taskmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…For about 99 percent of human evolution, our ancestors were hunter-gatherers inhabiting a highly complex and variable physical food environment, where food sources varied on both spatial and temporal availabilities 3,4 . A cognitive adaptation that could have evolved to optimize foraging efforts within such erratic food habitats of the past is a high-calorie bias in spatial memory 4,5 . Such an inbuilt spatial bias entails the automatic registration and prioritization in memory of high-calorie food locations.…”

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confidence: 99%

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Human spatial memory implicitly prioritizes high-calorie foods

Vries

Morquecho-Campos

Vet

et al. 2020

Sci Rep

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All species face the important adaptive problem of efficiently locating high-quality nutritional resources. We explored whether human spatial cognition is enhanced for high-calorie foods, in a large multisensory experiment that covertly tested the location memory of people who navigated a maze-like food setting. We found that individuals incidentally learned and more accurately recalled locations of high-calorie foods – regardless of explicit hedonic valuations or personal familiarity with foods. In addition, the high-calorie bias in human spatial memory already became evident within a limited sensory environment, where solely odor information was available. These results suggest that human minds continue to house a cognitive system optimized for energy-efficient foraging within erratic food habitats of the past, and highlight the often underestimated capabilities of the human olfactory sense.

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“…In a later test, memory for the location of the stand was linearly related to the caloric density of the food item being sold, such that the locations of more calorically dense food stands were better remembered. Others have also found enhanced spatial memory for calorically dense food items using a modified task in which participants needed to remember the location of various imaginary food items on a map (Allan & Allan, 2013;de Vries, de Vet, de Graaf, & Boesveldt, 2020). While all of these studies showed that caloric density may affect spatial memory of where the food was consumed, they were correlational in nature, and they do not speak to the effect of caloric density on memory for how much food was actually consumed.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%