Children overcoming picky eating (COPE) - A cluster randomised controlled trial

OBJECTIVES

Food neophobia limits dietary variety in children and adults. Interventions to alleviate the impact of neophobia on children's dietary variety have had varying success. The potential effectiveness of mindfulness, a process of bringing awareness to the present moment, has received little attention. This trial aimed to explore the effectiveness of two mindfulness exercises on novel food acceptance for children.

METHODS

A cluster-randomised controlled trial with three trial arms compared the impact of two mindfulness exercises (mindful breathing and mindful raisin-eating) and a non-mindful control task on anticipated liking and intake of a novel fruit. Seventy-one children aged 10-12 years engaged in one of the three tasks at school over five days and were offered a novel fruit at the end of the intervention. Children self-reported mindfulness, food neophobia and anxiety at baseline and follow-up.

RESULTS

Two mixed-effects models showed that, controlling for school effects and covariates (including mindfulness, food neophobia and anxiety), children in the mindful raisin-eating arm reported greater anticipated liking of a novel fruit and children in both mindfulness arms consumed greater amounts of a novel fruit than children in the control arm. Mixed-design ANOVAs indicated that mindfulness, food neophobia and anxiety did not change over time in each trial arm.

CONCLUSIONS

The results provide promising evidence for the potential effectiveness of mindfulness interventions in encouraging children to try new foods. The mechanisms underlying effectiveness remain unclear and further research, exploring long-term effects and the possibility to generalise these findings to other food groups such as vegetables, is needed.

Grounded procedures: A proximate mechanism for the psychology of cleansing and other physical actions

Experimental work has revealed causal links between physical cleansing and various psychological variables. Empirically, how robust are they? Theoretically, how do they operate? Major prevailing accounts focus on morality or disgust, capturing a subset of cleansing effects, but cannot easily handle cleansing effects in non-moral, non-disgusting contexts. Building on grounded views on cognitive processes and known properties of mental procedures, we propose grounded procedures of separation as a proximate mechanism underlying cleansing effects. This account differs from prevailing accounts in terms of explanatory kind, interpretive parsimony, and predictive scope. Its unique and falsifiable predictions have received empirical support: Cleansing attenuates or eliminates otherwise observed influences of prior events (1) across domains and (2) across valences. (3) Cleansing manipulations produce stronger effects the more strongly they engage sensorimotor capacities. (4) Reversing the causal arrow, motivation for cleansing is triggered more readily by negative than positive entities. (5) Conceptually similar effects extend to other physical actions of separation. On the flipside, grounded procedures of connection are also observed. Together, separation and connection organize prior findings relevant to multiple perspectives (e.g., conceptual metaphor, sympathetic magic) and open up new questions. Their predictions are more generalizable than the specific mappings in conceptual metaphors, but more fine-grained than the broad assumptions of grounded cognition. This intermediate level of analysis sheds light on the interplay between mental and physical processes.

Psychobiology and Social Psychology: Past, Present, and Future

Social psychology and psychobiology have a rich historicalconnection, although over the last half century these two disciplineshave seemingly become estranged. To a significant extent, that alienation arose from an archaic and nonviable model of behavioral biology that retarded the development of both disciplines. With the emergence of modern biological perspectives, this impediment no longer limits fruitful collaborations among social psychologists and psychobiologists. Indeed, some of the most exciting contemporary developments are emerging from the areas of social neuroscience, cognitive neuroscience, and behavioral neuroscience. We review the history of links between social psychology and psychobiology, the factors that led to the segregation of these subdisciplines, and the modern biological perspectives that provide the basis for reintegration of these disciplines.

Sequential Approach-Avoidance Movements

Abstract. The affective consequences of sequential approach-avoidance movements in the mouth were investigated. Participants (total N = 872) received words for which consonantal stricture spots either wandered first-inward-then-outward (e.g., FOLOKOLOF; approach-avoidance) or first-outward-then-inward (e.g., KOLOFOLOK; avoidance-approach) in the mouth. In a pilot study, it was established that first-inward-then-outward (first-outward-then-inward) is associated with negative disgust (positive ingestion) reactions (Experiment 1). Approach-avoidance sequences were preferred less than avoidance-approach sequences (Experiments 2a–3b); and this effect disappeared under oral motor-interference (Experiment 4). Experiment 5 provides evidence that a mere recency effect is an unlikely explanation for these effects. Thus, sequentially executed oral approach and avoidance movements do not cancel each other out but jointly influence resulting affective responses.

The Fox and the Grapes-How Physical Constraints Affect Value Based Decision Making

One fundamental question in decision making research is how humans compute the values that guide their decisions. Recent studies showed that people assign higher value to goods that are closer to them, even when physical proximity should be irrelevant for the decision from a normative perspective. This phenomenon, however, seems reasonable from an evolutionary perspective. Most foraging decisions of animals involve the trade-off between the value that can be obtained and the associated effort of obtaining. Anticipated effort for physically obtaining a good could therefore affect the subjective value of this good. In this experiment, we test this hypothesis by letting participants state their subjective value for snack food while the effort that would be incurred when reaching for it was manipulated. Even though reaching was not required in the experiment, we find that willingness to pay was significantly lower when subjects wore heavy wristbands on their arms. Thus, when reaching was more difficult, items were perceived as less valuable. Importantly, this was only the case when items were physically in front of the participants but not when items were presented as text on a computer screen. Our results suggest automatic interactions of motor and valuation processes which are unexplored to this date and may account for irrational decisions that occur when reward is particularly easy to reach.

Decision making under uncertainty and information processing in positive and negative mood states

This study examines whether mood states (a) influence decision making under uncertainty and (b) affect information processing. 200 students at the Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur participated in this study. Positive mood was induced by showing comedy movie clips to 100 participants and negative mood was induced by showing tragedy movie clips to another 100 participants. The participants were administered a questionnaire containing hypothetical situations of financial gains and losses, and a health risk problem. The participants selected a choice for each situation, and stated the reasons for their choice. Results suggested that the participants preferred cautious choices in the domain of gain and in health risk problems and risky choices in the domain of loss. Analysis of the reasons for the participants' choices suggested more fluency, originality, and flexibility of information in a negative mood compared to a positive mood. A negative (positive) mood state facilitated systematic (heuristic) information processing.

Hand over Heart Primes Moral Judgments and Behavior

Morality is a prominent guide of both action and perception. We argue that non-emotional gestures can prime the abstract concept of honesty. Four studies demonstrated that the emblematic gesture associated with honesty (putting a hand on one’s heart) increased the level of honesty perceived by others, and increased the honesty shown in one’s own behavior. Target persons performing this gesture were described in terms associated with honesty, and appeared more trustworthy to others than when the same targets were photographed with a control gesture. Persons performing the hand-over-heart gesture provided more honest assessments of others’ attractiveness, and refrained from cheating, as compared to persons performing neutral gestures. These findings suggest that bodily experience associated with abstract concepts can influence both one’s perceptions of others, and one’s own complex actions. Further, our findings suggest that this influence is not mediated by changes in affective states.

Confronting Intrasexual Rivals

The current research sheds light on a physiological mechanism potentially underlying confrontational responses to infidelity. Findings suggest that responses to infidelity threats in adulthood are shaped by hormonally mediated masculinization of the brain in utero. 2D:4D digit ratio (widely regarded as an index of prenatal testosterone exposure) moderated behavioral and endocrinological responses to infidelity threat. After an infidelity prime (but not a control prime), lower (more masculine) 2D:4D was associated with a greater tendency to approach attractive same-sex targets (intrasexual rivals) and with heightened increases in circulating testosterone, a hormone related to a variety of aggressive and confrontational behaviors.

Language use and stereotyping: the role of approach and avoidance motivation goals

The use of more abstract language to describe expected behaviors as opposed to unexpected behaviors has traditionally been considered a way of stereotype maintenance. This tendency is known as linguistic expectancy bias. Two experiments examined the influence of approach and avoidance motivational orientations on the production of this linguistic expectancy bias. It was predicted that approach strategic orientation is likely to describe expectancy consistent behaviors at a higher level of linguistic abstraction than expectancy inconsistent behaviors. In contrast, avoidance strategic orientation is likely to describe both expectancy consistent behaviors and expectancy inconsistent behaviors at a lower level of linguistic abstraction, thus facilitating the disappearance of linguistic expectancy bias. Two experiments confirmed these expectations, using strategic orientation manipulations based either on communication goals or on motor action, and measuring linguistic abstraction either on forced-choice answer format or on free descriptions. Implications for the generalisation of linguistic expectancy bias are discussed.

Approach/Avoidance Orientations Affect Self-Construal and Identification with In-group

Approach and avoidance are two basic motivational orientations. Their activation influences cognitive and perceptive processes: Previous work suggests that an approach orientation instigates a focus on larger units as compared to avoidance. Study 1 confirms this assumption using a paradigm that more directly taps a person's tendency to represent objects as belonging to small or large units than prior studies. It was further predicted that the self should also be represented as belonging to larger units, and hence be more interdependent under approach than under avoidance. Study 2 supports this prediction. As a consequence of this focus on belonging to larger units, it was finally predicted that approach results in a stronger identification with one's in-group than avoidance. Studies 3 and 4 support that prediction.

Cognitive consequences of motivational orientation: perceived similarity between objects

Recent findings suggest that the unconscious activation of the motivational orientations of approach and avoidance is accompanied by the adoption of a more global and a more local processing style, respectively. A global processing style, in turn, is assumed to instigate a focus on similarities whereas a local processing style is assumed to instigate a focus on differences. Integrating these two ideas, the present research examines the hypothesis that participants under approach perceive objects as more similar to each other than participants under avoidance. To test this assumption, we induced the two motivational orientations and elicited judgments of similarities (Experiments 1 and 2) and differences (Experiment 2) for pairs of pictures. Results confirmed the hypothesis. We propose that the relative attunement to similarities/differences under approach/avoidance is functional because it allows for a flexible conceptualization of the environment/an ability to discern slight deviations from what is expected.

Angry (or Disgusted), but Adjusting? The Effect of Specific Emotions on Adjustment From Self-Generated Anchors

Many numerical judgments are made by adjusting from a salient anchor value. This research examines the effect of high-certainty emotions—emotions associated with feelings of confidence about what is happening, what will happen, and how to respond—on the adjustment process. The authors examined whether such emotions would induce people to engage in adjustment more confidently and thoroughly, leading to greater adjustment. In two studies, the authors found that people feeling anger (Study 1) and disgust (Study 2)—emotions associated with appraisals of certainty—adjusted more from self-generated anchors than did people feeling fear (Study 1) and sadness (Study 2)—emotions associated with appraisals of uncertainty. Study 2 found that this effect does not occur for experimenter-provided anchors, from which adjustment tends to be less consistently observed.

Infection breeds reticence: the effects of disease salience on self-perceptions of personality and behavioral avoidance tendencies

Social living brings humans great rewards, but also associated dangers, such as increased risk of infection from others. Although the body's immune system is integral to combating disease, it is physiologically costly. Less costly are evolved mechanisms for promoting avoidance of people who are potentially infectious, such as perceiving oneself as less social and increasing the tendency to make avoidant movements. In Experiment 1, exposure to a disease prime led participants to rate themselves as less extraverted than did exposure to a control prime, and led participants high in perceived vulnerability to disease (PVD) to rate themselves as less agreeable and less open to experience than did exposure to a control prime. In Experiment 2, a disease prime facilitated avoidant tendencies in arm movements when participants viewed photographs of faces, especially for participants high in PVD. Together, these findings reveal functional changes in perception and behavior that would serve to promote avoidance of potentially infectious individuals.

Reach For What You Like: The Body's Role in Shaping Preferences

The position of individuals' bodies (e.g., holding a pencil in the mouth in a way that either facilitates or inhibits smiling musculature) can influence their emotional reactions to the stimuli they encounter, and can even impact their explicit preferences for one item over another. In this article we begin by reviewing the literature demonstrating these effects, explore mechanisms to explain this body-preference link, and introduce new work from our lab that asks whether one's bodily or motor experiences might also shape preferences in situations where the body is not contorted in a particular position, or when there is no intention to act. Such work suggests that one consequence of perceiving an object is the automatic and covert motor simulation of acting on this object. This, in turn, provides individuals with information about how easy or hard this action would be. It transpires that we like to do what is easy, and we also prefer objects that are easier to act on. The notion that judgments of object likeability are driven by motoric information furthers embodied cognition theories by demonstrating that even our preferences are grounded in action.

Emotion as motion: asymmetries in approach and avoidant actions

To emote literally means to move or prepare for action. A large body of research indicates that flexor and extensor movements are conditionally associated with approach- and avoidance-related motivations. It has also been widely argued that approach and avoidant motivations are asymmetrically instantiated in the left and right hemispheres, respectively. Nevertheless, to date, these literatures remain largely separate. In the present investigation, flexor and extensor movements that were visuospatially contextualized as being directed toward the self and away from the self were observed to be asymmetrically represented in the "approach" and "avoidance" hemispheres. Moreover, this pattern of hemispheric specialization was manifested to a greater degree the higher participants' self-reported level of daily positive affect and the lower their self-reported level of dispositional anxiety. Collectively, these findings have direct implications for models of embodied emotional and perceptual processing, as well as for investigations of individual differences in emotional disposition.

Are we puppets on a string? The contextual meaning of unconscious expressive cues

In three studies, the authors show that unconscious expressive cues can lead to opposite evaluations, depending on the context in which they occur. In Study 1, brow (vs. cheek) tension reduced preferences in an easy judgment context but increased preferences in a difficult context. In Study 2, head shaking (vs. nodding) either increased or decreased prosocial affect depending on the context in which the judged character was presented. In Study 3, a subliminal smile (vs. frown) led to higher self-ratings of performance when paired with one's own actions but to lower self-ratings of performance when paired with a competitor's actions. Together, these results suggest that the meaning of unconscious expressive cues is not fixed.

The influence of unilateral and bilateral arm flexion versus extension on judgments: an exploratory case of motor congruence

Two experiments were conducted to examine how activation of the motivational systems of approach and withdrawal (arm flexion vs. extension) through 2 different bodily mechanisms (right arm vs. left arm) influenced participants' evaluations of neutral Chinese ideographs. Study 1 found that unilateral flexion on the right side and unilateral extension on the left side led to more positive evaluations than unilateral flexion on the left side and unilateral extension on the right side. Using bilateral movements, Study 2 found that simultaneous performance of a right-arm flexion and a left-arm extension led to more positive evaluations than a left-arm flexion and a right-arm extension. A motor congruence hypothesis was offered to account for these findings.

Effects of Media Formats on Emotions and Impulse Buying Intent

One way of generating revenue from broadband media content rests upon the assumption that multi-media content may trigger a greater intent to buy products and services impulsively. An experiment was performed in order to explore the effects of media formats on the emotions and impulse buying intentions for music compact discs (CDs). Three distinct media formats of World Wide Web pages were set up: (1) the text of the lyrics, (2) still images from the song's music video and (3) the music video itself. Each had a varying degree of visual/ verbal intensity while simultaneously playing the soundtrack in all three conditions. The results of this study indicate that displaying the text of the lyrics had a greater effect on the impulse buying intent than showing still images of the music video. In addition, different media formats caused emotional responses that can explain the participant's impulse buying intent to buy the CD. Unexpectedly, the still images and video did not necessarily generate more buying intention than combinations of the text and music. Therefore, it is recommended that electronic commerce and marketing managers explore innovative ways of integrating visual and verbal media formats for eliciting an effective consumer response.

Kontextabhängige Kreativität

Zusammenfassung. Menschliche Kreativität ist nicht nur ein Persönlichkeitsmerkmal, sie wird vielmehr stark durch den sozialen Kontext beeinflusst. Unsere motivationale Theorie der Kreativität basiert auf der regulatorischen Fokustheorie und dem Stimmung als Informations-Ansatz. Wir nehmen darin an, dass Menschen durch Reize in der Umgebung in einen Promotion Fokus der Annäherung oder einen Prevention Fokus der Vermeidung versetzt werden können. Ein Promotion Fokus begünstigt kreatives Denken, während ein Prevention Fokus dieses eher behindert. In zahlreichen Experimenten fanden sich hypothesenkonforme Ergebnisse, die in einem Überblick zusammengefasst werden sollen. Weiterhin werden neuere Ergebnisse präsentiert, die zeigen, dass vor allem die starke Perseveranz auf konventionellen Lösungen zu einer Minderung der Kreativität in einem Prevention Fokus führt. Abschließend sollen erste Experimente präsentiert werden, die zeigen, dass Annäherungsmotive die rechte Gehirnhälfte aktivieren, was wiederum kreatives Denken fördert, während Vermeidungsmotive die linke Gehirnhälfte aktivieren, was analytisches Denken fördert. Die Befunde werden auf der Grundlage bestehender Theorien diskutiert und Konsequenzen für den Alltag werden aufgezeigt.

Social neuroscience: understanding the pieces fosters understanding the whole and vice versa

Social science and neuroscience perspectives represent two ends of a continuum of levels of organization studied in psychology. Human behavior as a whole unfolds at social levels of organization, whereas much of the research in psychology has focused on cognitive and biological pieces of this whole. Recent evidence underscores the complementary nature of social, cognitive, and biological levels of analysis and how research integrating these levels can foster more comprehensive theories of the mechanisms underlying complex behavior and the mind. This research underscores the unity of psychology and the importance of retaining multilevel integrative research that spans molar and molecular levels of analysis.

The automatic evaluation of novel stimuli

From classic theory and research in psychology, we distill a broad theoretical statement that evaluative responding can be immediate, unintentional, implicit, stimulus based, and linked directly to approach and avoidance motives. This statement suggests that evaluative responses should be elicited by novel, nonrepresentational stimuli (e.g., abstract art, "foreign" words). We tested this hypothesis through combining the best features of relevant automatic-affect research paradigms. We first obtained explicit evaluative ratings of novel stimuli. From these, we selected normatively positive and negative stimuli to use as primes in a sequential priming paradigm. Two experiments using this paradigm demonstrated that briefly presented novel prime stimuli were evaluated automatically, as they facilitated responses to subsequently presented target stimuli of the same valence just as much as did pictures or names of real objects. A final experiment revealed that exposure to novel stimuli produces muscular predispositions to approach or avoid them.

Zur Wechselwirkung von Medien und Motorik

Zusammenfassung: In einem Experiment wurde der Einfluß motorischer Komponenten von Annäherungs- vs. Vermeidungsverhalten auf die Bewertung der FDP untersucht. Während der Betrachtung einer 5-minütigen Sequenz aus einer politischen Fernsehdokumentation über die FDP sollten die TeilnehmerInnen entweder den Arm von sich strecken (Armstreckung), ihn beugen (Armbeugung) oder ihn in den Schoß legen (Kontrollgruppe). Frühere Forschung zum Körper-Feedback ( Cacioppo, Priester & Berntson, 1993 ) zeigt, daß Armbeugung mit einem Annäherungsverhalten und Armstreckung mit einem Vermeidungsverhalten assoziiert ist und diese sich auf Urteile auswirken. Die Ergebnisse der vorliegenden Studie legen dar, daß TeilnehmerInnen unter solchermaßen induziertem Annäherungsverhalten (Armbeugung) die FDP als sympathischer beurteilen und sie für kompetenter halten als TeilnehmerInnen unter Vermeidungsverhalten (Armstreckung). Darüber hinaus gaben TeilnehmerInnen mit Annäherungsverhalten eine höhere Wahlprognose für die FDP ab als solche mit Vermeidungsverhalten. Die Ergebnisse werden auf dem Hintergrund bestehender Theorien zum Körper-Feedback diskutiert und ihre Implikationen für die Werbe- und Medienpsychologie aufgezeigt.

Putting adjustment back in the anchoring and adjustment heuristic: differential processing of self-generated and experimenter-provided anchors

People's estimates of uncertain quantities are commonly influenced by irrelevant values. These anchoring effects were originally explained as insufficient adjustment away from an initial anchor value. The existing literature provides little support for the postulated process of adjustment, however, and a consensus that none takes place seems to be emerging. We argue that this conclusion is premature, and we present evidence that insufficient adjustment produces anchoring effects when the anchors are self-generated. In Study 1, participants' verbal reports made reference to adjustment only, from self-generated anchors. In Studies 2 and 3, participants induced to accept values by nodding their heads gave answers that were closer to an anchor (i.e., they adjusted less) than participants induced to deny values by shaking their heads--again, only when the anchor was self-generated. These results suggest it is time to reintroduce anchoring and adjustment as an explanation for some judgments under uncertainty.

Motor actions in retrieval of valenced information: a motor congruence effect

To study the influence of overt behavior on the generation of valenced information participants were induced to perform either approach (arm flexion) or avoidance (arm extension) behaviors while generating the names of celebrities towards whom they had positive, negative, or neutral attitudes. Participants performing arm flexion generated more names of positively evaluated persons while participants performing arm extension tended to generate more names of negatively evaluated persons. Both self-perception and mood are discussed as potential bases for the obtained effect. In the light of our previous results, we suggest an alternative mechanism of compatibility between motor actions and information which implies that fewer cognitive resources are needed for "compatibility" than for "incompatibility."