Motivating operations in appetite research

Analyzing motivating functions of consumer behavior: Evidence from attention and neural responses to choices and consumption

Academia and business have shown an increased interest in using neurophysiological methods, such as eye-tracking and electroencephalography (EEG), to assess consumer motivation. The current research contributes to this literature by verifying whether these methods can predict the effects of antecedent events as motivating functions of attention, neural responses, choice, and consumption. Antecedent motivational factors are discussed, with a specific focus on deprivation as such a situational factor. Thirty-two participants were randomly assigned to the experimental and control conditions. Water deprivation of 11-12 h was used as an establishing operation to increase the reinforcing effectiveness of water. We designed three experimental sessions to capture the complexity of the relationship between antecedents and consumer behavior. Experimental manipulations in session 1 established the effectiveness of water for the experimental group and abolished it for the control group. Results from session 2 show that participants in the experimental group had significantly higher average fixation duration for the image of water. Their frontal asymmetry did not provide significant evidence of greater left frontal activation toward the water image. Session 3 demonstrated that choice and consumption behavior of the relevant reinforcer was significantly higher for participants in the experimental group. These early findings highlight the potential application of a multi-method approach using neurophysiological tools in consumer research, which provides a comprehensive picture of the functional relationship between motivating events, behavior (attention, neural responses, choice, and consumption), and consequences.

Improving Beverage Choice in Adults with Developmental Disabilities: Implementation of a Token Reinforcement System in a Community Residential Setting

Individuals with developmental disabilities (DD) are twice as likely to have obesity than non-disabled individuals. Replacing the consumption of sugar sweetened beverages (SSBs) with water has many health benefits, including weight reduction. In this study, a token reinforcement system was implemented to increase water consumption and decrease the consumption of SSBs with 14 adult participants with DD living in a community-based independent supported living (ISL) center. Token reinforcement reduced the consumption of SSBs, with associated reductions in calorie consumption and body weight. Findings are especially important for treatment settings where resources for individualized meal planning and staffing to support comprehensive behavioral interventions may be limited.

A tasting experiment comparing food and nutritional supplement in anorexia nervosa

Anorexia nervosa (AN) is a severe psychiatric disorder leading to life-threatening emaciation. Weight restoration is crucial in treatment but few data are available on how to achieve it. Nutritional supplements are needed in treatment but patients' preferences about natural versus medical foods and their gustatory/hedonic perception are unclear. We aimed to measure disgust and reward-based eating in AN and to assess psychological, interoceptive awareness-related, behavioral, and hedonic aspects comparing natural versus medical food. Thirty-three inpatients with AN and 39 healthy controls (HCs) were recruited and received 50 ml of either apricot juice or nutritional liquid supplement with apricot flavor on two consecutive days. Disgust, reward-based eating, and eating psychopathology were evaluated. Visual Analogue Scales measuring anxiety, hunger, confusion about internal states, need for over-exercise, restraint, and satiety were completed before and after the experiment. Disgust and hedonic responses were measured after the experiment. Patients with AN reported preserved disgust sensitivity and higher reward-based eating drive. When compared to HCs, inpatients with AN reported higher scores on anxiety, hunger, confusion about internal states, urge to over-exercise, urge to eating restraint, and satiety before and after the tasting experiment. The supplement slightly increased patients' anxiety with HCs reporting the same trend. Still, patients reported more food-related disgust after the supplement but their overall hedonic evaluation was similar for both conditions. Also, anxiety, confusion about internal states, and urge to over-exercise and restraint did not significantly increase after consuming either food. Therefore, if we take into account patients' level of heightened satiety and suppressed hunger, supplements could be helpful for patients with severe AN since greater energy intakes could be provided with only small volumes of food and little changes of eating concerns.

Increasing Exercise Intensity: Teaching High-Intensity Interval Training to Individuals with Developmental Disabilities Using a Lottery Reinforcement System

Rates of overweight and obesity are above 70% in typically developing adults in the United States, with higher rates observed in individuals diagnosed with developmental disability (DD). Lottery reinforcement systems have been validated as effective exercise interventions for individuals with DD. Although high-intensity interval training (HIIT) has demonstrated health benefits, it has not been studied using individuals within this population. The purpose of this study was to implement a lottery reinforcement system to systematically increase heart rate (HR) during 30-min HIIT sessions with 3 adults with DD. Results demonstrated increases in HR from below to within the prescribed range in all 3 participants. For 1 participant, weight decreased by 10.8 pounds during the 9-week program. Implications include that lottery systems increase exercise intensity with adults with DD, that HR during exercise can be reliably controlled using a lottery system, and that similar programs may result in health benefits.

Rethinking Food Reward

The conscious perception of the hedonic sensory properties of caloric foods is commonly believed to guide our dietary choices. Current and traditional models implicate the consciously perceived hedonic qualities of food as driving overeating, whereas subliminal signals arising from the gut would curb our uncontrolled desire for calories. Here we review recent animal and human studies that support a markedly different model for food reward. These findings reveal in particular the existence of subcortical body-to-brain neural pathways linking gastrointestinal nutrient sensors to the brain's reward regions. Unexpectedly, consciously perceptible hedonic qualities appear to play a less relevant, and mostly transient, role in food reinforcement. In this model, gut-brain reward pathways bypass cranial taste and aroma sensory receptors and the cortical networks that give rise to flavor perception. They instead reinforce behaviors independently of the cognitive processes that support overt insights into the nature of our dietary decisions.

Healthy Eating: Approaching the Selection, Preparation, and Consumption of Healthy Food as Choice Behavior

Healthy eating has important well-being and financial implications for our society. As such, it is critical that the field of behavior science and behavior analysis conduct more research in this area so that effective interventions may be developed. One barrier to addressing healthy eating may be conceptual. Far from being a single response, eating is comprised of a series of choice responses. These selection, preparation and consumption responses form a temporally delayed behavioral chain. When designing interventions to address healthy eating, therefore, one must not only consider the specific target response, but alternative response options, and the effect of changing one response on other choices in the chain. The purpose of this article is to refine the analysis of healthy eating behavior, provide examples of research conducted in this area, and discuss how these interventions may influence this chain of responses. It is hoped that by doing so, additional research will be conducted and disseminated so that individuals, organizations, and policy makers can implement more effective interventions for healthy eating.

Food vs money? Effects of hunger on mood and behavioral reactivity to reward in anorexia nervosa

BACKGROUND

Previous studies using neuroimaging and behavioral measures reported altered reward processing in anorexia nervosa (AN). In addition, anhedonia states are frequently reported in AN, potentially due to the physiological stress produced by the permanent starvation. We investigated the effect of fasting and satiety on mood and reaction times to monetary rewards in AN patients and healthy controls.

METHODS

Twenty-four participants with acute AN (BMI 14.4 (11.9-15.5) Kg/m²) and 17 age and gender matched healthy, normal weight subjects (HW) (BMI 21.8 (18.9-24.9) Kg/m²) performed a reward task (the wheel of fortune) involving uncertain (50/50 probability of winning high and low rewards), safe and risky (30/70 and 10/90 probabilities) categories in fasted (after an 8-h fasting period) and fed (after intake of a standardized meal) states. Data analysis was done with linear mixed models.

RESULTS

AN reacted slower than HW when maximum uncertainty (50/50) was involved. Positive mood in response to winning was higher when fasting especially for HW, while negative mood in response to not winning was higher in the fed state for both groups. Still, HW were more reactive than AN to not winning a highly predictable monetary reward (10/90 safe).

CONCLUSION

The data on the reaction times indicate an impaired motor response to uncertainty in AN. Mood reactivity to winning a monetary reward does not seem to be impaired in AN, however, our results suggest that negative mood in response to not winning is less adaptive in AN. Implications to clinical psychotherapy are discussed.

Lost in Translation: A Reply to Shyman (2016)

A recently published article sought to determine the extent to which behaviorism and humanism can be reconciled ( Shyman, 2016 ). However, the "current" conceptions of behaviorism and applied behavior analysis (ABA) used for the analysis were based on mischaracterizations, rendering moot many of the points made. Nevertheless, Shyman (2016) highlighted a very important question we believe all helping professionals should attend to: Should normalization be the focus of therapeutic goals? This response article was written to provide readers of this journal an accurate representation of behaviorism and ABA. We have also offered an alternative approach to answering the question of normalization that uses a behavior-by-behavior approach and individual client values as the deciding factors.

A Bibliographic Tribute to Jack Michael

"In the late 1950's, Jack Michael, a bright but irritating young psychology instructor, moved from the Universities of Kansas to Houston to Arizona State. Along the way he befriended two nontraditional students, protected them through their Ph.D. programs, and turned them loose on the world: Teodoro Ayllon…and Montrose Wolf…" (Risley, 2001, p. 267). So begins Risley's chapter on the origins of applied behavior analysis. For almost 50 years, Jack Michael provided a model for us to "talk like Skinner" and to analyze behavior as Skinner would. For this, he has been widely respected and revered. The purpose of this bibliography is to explain to new and familiar readers alike Jack's contributions to the field of behavior analysis in areas of his primary focus: (a) behavioral function taxonomy, (b) motivation, (c) reinforcement, (d) response topographies, (e) multiple control, (f) duplic and codic verbal behavior, and (g) teaching. Throughout, we weave his role in the field's history and his leadership in its expansion, as these have been additional areas of significant contributions. Above all, we wish to highlight Jack's work, in bibliographic and narrative form, in a way that expresses a heartfelt tribute on behalf of his students and others whom he influenced to learn about psychology as a natural science and to think and talk like Skinner.

A New Frontier: Integrating Behavioral and Digital Technology to Promote Health Behavior

Modifiable behavioral risk factors such as cigarette smoking, physical inactivity, and obesity contribute to over 40 % of premature deaths in the USA. Advances in digital and information technology are creating unprecedented opportunities for behavior analysts to assess and modify these risk factors. Technological advances include mobile devices, wearable sensors, biomarker detectors, and real-time access to therapeutic support via information technology. Integrating these advances with behavioral technology in the form of conceptually systematic principles and procedures could usher in a new generation of effective and scalable behavioral interventions targeting health behavior. In this selective review of the literature, we discuss how technological tools can assess and modify a range of antecedents and consequences of healthy and unhealthy behavior. We also describe practical, methodological, and conceptual advantages for behavior analysts that stem from the use of technology to assess and treat health behavior.

Feeding behavior, obesity, and neuroeconomics

For the past 50 years, the most prevalent theoretical models for regulation of food intake have been based in the physiological concept of energy homeostasis. However, several authors have noted that the simplest form of homeostasis, stability, does not accurately reflect the actual state of affairs and most notably the recent upward trend in body mass index observed in the majority of affluent nations. The present review argues that processes of natural selection have more likely made us first and foremost behavioral opportunists that are adapted to uncertain environments, and that physiological homeostasis is subservient to that reality. Examples are presented from a variety of laboratory studies indicating that food intake is a function of the effort and/or time required to procure that food, and that economic decision-making is central to understanding how much and when organisms eat. The discipline of behavioral economics has developed concepts that are useful for this enterprise, and some of these are presented. Lastly, we present demonstrations in which genetic or physiologic investigations using environmental complexity will lead to more realistic ideas about how to understand and treat idiopathic human obesity. The fact is that humans are eating more and gaining weight in favorable food environments in exactly the way predicted from some of these models, and this has implications for the appropriate way to treat obesity.

Liking vs. wanting food: importance for human appetite control and weight regulation

Current train of thought in appetite research is favouring an interest in non-homeostatic or hedonic (reward) mechanisms in relation to overconsumption and energy balance. This tendency is supported by advances in neurobiology that precede the emergence of a new conceptual approach to reward where affect and motivation (liking and wanting) can be seen as the major force in guiding human eating behaviour. In this review, current progress in applying processes of liking and wanting to the study of human appetite are examined by discussing the following issues: How can these concepts be operationalised for use in human research to reflect the neural mechanisms by which they may be influenced? Do liking and wanting operate independently to produce functionally significant changes in behaviour? Can liking and wanting be truly experimentally separated or will an expression of one inevitably contain elements of the other? The review contains a re-examination of selected human appetite research before exploring more recent methodological approaches to the study of liking and wanting in appetite control. In addition, some theoretical developments are described in four diverse models that may enhance current understanding of the role of these processes in guiding ingestive behaviour. Finally, the implications of a dual process modulation of food reward for weight gain and obesity are discussed. The review concludes that processes of liking and wanting are likely to have independent roles in characterising susceptibility to weight gain. Further research into the dissociation of liking and wanting through implicit and explicit levels of processing would help to disclose the relative importance of these components of reward for appetite control and weight regulation.