Attentional Bias and Slowed Disengagement from Food and Threat Stimuli in Restrained Eaters Using a Modified Stroop Task

The Absence of Attentional Bias to Low-Calorie Food Stimuli in Restrictive Dieters: Differences in the Allocation of Attentional Resources to High-Calorie Foods

Restrictive dieters are those who expect to achieve body shape and weight control through dieting. However, they often have difficulty suppressing the desire to consume food when confronted with it. It has been shown that when high- and low-calorie foods are presented together, the attention of restrictive eaters is preferentially directed to high-calorie foods. However, whether attentional bias occurs when low-calorie foods are present alone and whether the allocation of attentional resources is consistent with that for high-calorie foods has yet to be explored. The present study focused on the effects of high-/low-calorie foods on attentional bias in restrictive dieters. Seventy-eight participants were recruited to participate in the experiment via the Dutch Eating Behavior Questionnaire (DEBQ) scale, which is administered in a rapid serial visual presentation (RSVP) task. The results revealed that failed restrictive dieters had the lowest percentage of correct answers at the lag2 level, indicating attentional bias. Failed restrictive dieters allocated more attentional resources to high-calorie foods than to low-calorie foods. Restrictive dieters showed no attentional bias when low-calorie foods were presented alone. The results suggest that low-calorie foods do not elicit an attentional bias in restrictive dieters and that the allocation of attentional resources is not consistent when compared to that for high-calorie foods.

Unpacking the overlap between Autism and ADHD in adults: A multi-method approach

The overlap between Autism and Attention-Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) is widely observed in clinical settings, with growing interest in their co-occurrence in neurodiversity research. Until relatively recently, however, concurrent diagnoses of Autism and ADHD were not possible. This has limited the scope for large-scale research on their cross-condition associations, further stymied by a dearth of open science practices in the neurodiversity field. Additionally, almost all previous research linking Autism and ADHD has focused on children and adolescents, despite them being lifelong conditions. Tackling these limitations in previous research, 5504 adults - including a nationally representative sample of the UK (Study 1; n = 504) and a large pre-registered study (Study 2; n = 5000) - completed well-established self-report measures of Autism and ADHD traits. A series of network analyses unpacked the associations between Autism and ADHD at the individual trait level. Low inter-item connectivity was consistently found between conditions, supporting the distinction between Autism and ADHD as separable constructs. Subjective social enjoyment and hyperactivity-impulsivity traits were most condition-specific to Autism and ADHD, respectively. Traits related to attention control showed the greatest Bridge Expected Influence across conditions, revealing a potential transdiagnostic process underlying the overlap between Autism and ADHD. To investigate this further at the cognitive level, participants completed a large, well-powered, and pre-registered study measuring the relative contributions of Autism and ADHD traits to attention control (Study 3; n = 500). We detected age- and sex-related effects, however, attention control did not account for the covariance between Autism and ADHD traits. We situate our findings and discuss future directions in the cognitive science of Autism, ADHD, and neurodiversity, noting how our open datasets may be used in future research.

Dynamic attentional bias for pictorial and textual food cues in the visual search paradigm

Previous studies have found that individuals have an attentional bias for food cues, which may be related to the energy level or the type of stimulus (e.g., pictorial or textual food cues) of the food cues. However, the available evidence is inconsistent, and there is no consensus about how the type of stimulus and food energy modulate food-related attentional bias. Searching for food is one of the most important daily behaviors. In this study, a modified visual search paradigm was used to explore the attentional bias for food cues, and eye movements were recorded. Food cues consisted of both food words and food pictures with different energy levels (i.e., high- and low-calorie foods). The results showed that there was an attentional avoidance in the early stage but a later-stage attentional approach for all food cues in the pictorial condition. This was especially true for high-calorie food pictures. Participants showed a later-stage conflicting attentional bias for foods with different energy levels in the textual condition. They showed an attentional approach to high-calorie food words but an attentional avoidance of low-calorie food words. These data show that food-related attentional bias varied along with different time courses, which was also modulated by the type of stimulus and food energy. These findings regarding dynamic attentional bias could be explained using the Goal Conflict Model of eating behavior.

Preference for ugly faces? -A cognitive study of attentional and memorial biases toward facial information among young females with facial dissatisfaction

Dissatisfaction with facial appearance is one of the strongest contributors to body image disturbance among young Chinese females and leads to a series of psychological and behavioral disorders. By conducting behavioral and ERP experiments, this study illustrates how young females in China with facial dissatisfaction process different levels of facial attractiveness. Experiments 1 and 2 are behavioral experiments in which the dot-probe paradigm was used to explore the participant's attentional bias to facial attractiveness. The results showed that regardless of whether the face image was presented above or below the threshold, young females with facial dissatisfaction exhibited attentional orientation toward lowly attractive faces and attentional avoidance to both lowly and highly attractive faces, while the control group showed difficulty in attentional disengagement from highly attractive faces. In experiment 3, the learning-recognition task was used to examine mnemonic bias toward facial attractiveness among females with facial dissatisfaction, and EEG data were also recorded during the encoding and retrieval phases. The study found that young females with facial dissatisfaction exhibited a mnemonic preference for lowly attractive images at both the encoding and retrieving stages, with higher P1, N170, P2, and N300 induced by lowly attractive faces, while the control group preferred highly attractive faces. In conclusion, young females with facial dissatisfaction tend to exhibit attentional orientation and mnemonic bias toward lowly attractive faces.

Effects of Mindset and Dietary Restraint on Attention Bias for Food and Food Intake

Evidence for attention bias (AB) for food in restrained eaters is inconsistent. A person's mindset related to food - that is, whether someone focuses on the hedonic or health aspects of food - might be an overlooked influence on AB for food, possibly explaining the inconsistency in the literature. Fluctuations between a hedonic versus a health mindset might be strongest in restrained eaters, who have a conflicted relationship with food. We investigated the effect of mindset and dietary restraint on AB for food and food intake. We hypothesized that AB for food, as reflected in eye-movement measures and manual response latencies, as well as food intake, would be larger in the hedonic than in the health mindset, most strongly in participants scoring high on dietary restraint. Moreover, we expected a positive correlation between AB for food and food intake, especially in the hedonic mindset. We used short video clips to induce either a health or hedonic mindset. Subsequently, participants (n = 122) performed a modified additional singleton task with pictures of high-caloric food vs neutral pictures as irrelevant distractors. Next, food intake was measured in a bogus taste test. We found no evidence for an AB towards food, nor any moderation by either mindset or dietary restraint. Food intake tended to be higher for participants scoring higher on dietary restraint, but effects were not moderated by mindset. Response-latency based AB for food tended to correlate positively with food intake in the hedonic mindset. Taken together, our hypotheses regarding AB for food were largely not confirmed. We provide suggestions on how to improve upon the specific implementations of our AB task and mindset manipulation, to strengthen future research in this field.

Food Captures Attention, but Not the Eyes: An Eye-Tracking Study on Mindset and BMI’s Impact on Attentional Capture by High-Caloric Visual Food Stimuli

Obesity is a worldwide pandemic and theories propose that attentional bias (AB) for food triggers craving and overeating, especially for people with obesity. However, empirical evidence is inconsistent, which may be due to methodological diversity and the double-sided nature of high-caloric palatable foods. That is, these foods simultaneously have a high hedonic and a low health value. So, depending on context and/or emotional state, people’s mindset while viewing foods may alternate between hedonic (taste) and health (calories) values, possibly affecting AB for food in opposite directions. This study tests how mindset and BMI (Body Mass Index) influences AB and food intake. We expect greater AB for food and more food intake in the hedonic compared to the health mindset, especially for people with obesity. Mindsets were induced using short video-clips in two sessions in counterbalanced order. Participants (35 with a healthy-weight-category BMI, 31 with obesity) performed a modified Additional Singleton paradigm where they searched for a neutral target among neutral fillers. On 90% of the trials, either a food or a neutral distractor appeared. Response latencies to the target and eye-movements to the distractor were recorded. Dependent variables included: response latencies, and eye-movement variables on the distractor: fixations (%), 1st fixation duration, dwell-time. Food intake was assessed in a bogus taste test. No significant effects emerged from the eye-movements analysis, whereas the analysis of response latencies showed an AB for food, not significantly moderated by BMI or mindset. Food intake was affected by mindset partly as expected, as participants ate more in the hedonic than in the health mindset when the hedonic mindset was induced in the second session. One AB measure (fixations) correlated positively with food intake. Finally, food captured attention – but not the eyes – and mindset affects food intake partly as expected.

Visual cues associated with sweet taste increase short-term eating and grab attention in healthy volunteers

Most studies that examine responses to food cues use images of actual foods as stimuli. Since foods are rewarding in multiple ways, it then becomes difficult to try and partial out the role of the importance of different aspects of food reward. Here we aimed to evaluate the impact of novel visual cues specifically associated with the immediate sensory reward from a liked sweet taste. In the training phase, one visual cue (CSsweet) was associated with the experience of sweet taste (10%sucrose) and a second, control cue (CSneutral) with a neutral taste (artificial saliva) using a disguised training procedure. In Experiment 1, participants (n = 45) were given an ad libitum snack intake test 30 min post-training, either labelled with CSsweet or CSneutral. Total caloric consumption was significantly higher in the CSsweet (650 ± 47 kcal) than CSneutral (477 ± 45 kcal) condition, but ratings of liking for the snacks did not differ significantly between conditions. In Experiment 2, participants (n = 80) exhibited an overall attentional bias (22.1 ± 9.9 ms) for the CSsweet relative to CSneutral cue (assessed using a dot-probe task), however rated liking for the CSsweet did not change significantly after cue-sweet training. Likewise, measures of expected satiety for drinks labelled with CSsweet did not differ significantly from CSneutral. Overall these two experiments provide evidence that associations between neutral visual cues and the experience of a liked sweet taste leads to cue-potentiated eating in the presence of the CSsweet cue. With no evidence that cue-sweet training altered rated liking for the visual cues, and in keeping with extant literature on the dissociation of hedonic and rewarding properties of food rewards, we propose this potentiation effect to reflect increased incentive salience.

Emotion regulation ability compensates for the depression-related negativity bias

Emotion regulation ability (ERA) enables individuals to disengage from negative stimuli. In this study, we investigated the role of ERA in the depression-related negativity bias. Seventy-four individuals with major depressive disorder and eighty-three nonclinical individuals were screened for depressiveness using the Beck Depression Inventory. ERA was assessed using the Action Orientation After Failure Subscale of the Action Control Scale. We used a classical Stroop task variant, wherein the color words were preceded by either a self-relevant positive (success-related), negative (failure-related), or neutral word prime. The expected depressiveness × emotional prime interaction did not reach significance but the expected ERA × emotional prime interaction did. The latter effect was qualified by a three-way interaction between ERA, depressiveness, and emotional prime. Specifically, ERA predicted the negativity bias in individuals with high depressiveness scores. Using the Johnson-Neyman technique, we found that this effect was significant at the level of mild to moderate depression and beyond. Thus, poor ERA in individuals with depression may cause the depression-related negativity bias, whereas (at least) moderate ERA may protect individuals with depression from this bias. Future studies should assess ERA in individuals with depressive symptomatology and investigate how it influences their everyday functioning and treatment outcomes.

Implicit food odour priming effects on reactivity and inhibitory control towards foods

The food environment can interact with cognitive processing and influence eating behaviour. Our objective was to characterize the impact of implicit olfactory priming on inhibitory control towards food, in groups with different weight status. Ninety-one adults completed a modified Affective Shifting Task: they had to detect target stimuli and ignore distractor stimuli while being primed with non-attentively perceived odours. We measured reactivity and inhibitory control towards food pictures. Priming effects were observed on reactivity: participants with overweight and obesity were slower when primed with pear and pound cake odour respectively. Common inhibitory control patterns toward foods were observed between groups. We suggest that non-attentively perceived food cues influence bottom-up processing by activating distinguished mental representations according to weight status. Also, our data show that cognitive load influences inhibitory control toward foods. Those results contribute to understanding how the environment can influence eating behaviour in individuals with obesity.

Effect of dietary restraint and mood state on attentional processing of food cues

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES

Research linking dietary restraint to attentional bias toward food cues has been equivocal, suggesting that dietary restraint may only influence attentional processing of food in certain contexts. The present study examined whether negative mood strengthens the association between dietary restraint and attention bias for food.

METHODS

Healthy female participants were randomized to either a neutral (n = 47) or negative mood (n = 49) induction. Participants then completed a visual search task featuring targets displayed adjacent to pictures of palatable food, musical instruments, or non-instrument filler objects. Attention bias for food was operationalized as shorter response latency when the target appeared adjacent to palatable food as compared to musical instruments. Attention bias was examined in a 2 (mood condition) × 2 (picture: food vs. instrument) × 2 (target location: match vs. mismatch) repeated measures ANCOVA, with dietary restraint as a continuous covariate and response latency as the dependent variable.

RESULTS

Though there was no evidence of an interaction between mood condition and dietary restraint, mood had an influence on attention allocation. Contrary to study hypotheses, individuals in the neutral mood condition, but not those in the negative mood condition, responded in a manner indicative of bias toward food.

LIMITATIONS

Additional research is necessary to validate the experimental task used in the present study to assess food-specific attentional bias.

CONCLUSIONS

Neutral mood may be associated with enhanced processing of palatable food cues. Critically, results do not support the hypothesized link between negative mood and attention bias for food.

Worry or craving? A selective review of evidence for food-related attention biases in obese individuals, eating-disorder patients, restrained eaters and healthy samples

Living in an ‘obesogenic’ environment poses a serious challenge for weight maintenance. However, many people are able to maintain a healthy weight indicating that not everybody is equally susceptible to the temptations of this food environment. The way in which someone perceives and reacts to food cues, that is, cognitive processes, could underlie differences in susceptibility. An attention bias for food could be such a cognitive factor that contributes to overeating. However, an attention bias for food has also been implicated with restrained eating and eating-disorder symptomatology. The primary aim of the present review was to determine whether an attention bias for food is specifically related to obesity while also reviewing evidence for attention biases in eating-disorder patients, restrained eaters and healthy-weight individuals. Another aim was to systematically examine how selective attention for food relates (causally) to eating behaviour. Current empirical evidence on attention bias for food within obese samples, eating-disorder patients, and, even though to a lesser extent, in restrained eaters is contradictory. However, present experimental studies provide relatively consistent evidence that an attention bias for food contributes to subsequent food intake. This review highlights the need to distinguish not only between different (temporal) attention bias components, but also to take different motivations (craving v. worry) and their impact on attentional processing into account. Overall, the current state of research suggests that biased attention could be one important cognitive mechanism by which the food environment tempts us into overeating.