Bias for the (un)attractive self: on the role of attention in causing body (dis)satisfaction

Objective: Body dissatisfaction plays a key role in the maintenance of eating disorders, and selective attention might be crucial for the origin of body dissatisfaction. A. Jansen, C. Nederkoorn, and S. Mulkens (2005) showed that eating disorder patients attend relatively more to their own unattractive body parts, whereas healthy controls attend relatively more to their own attractive body parts. In 2 studies, we investigated whether this bias in selective attention is causal to body dissatisfaction and whether an experimentally induced bias for attractive body parts might lead to increased body satisfaction in women who are highly dissatisfied with their bodies. Design: We used a between-subjects design in which participants were trained to attend to either their self-defined unattractive body parts or their self-defined attractive body parts by use of an eye tracker. Main Outcome Measures: State body and weight satisfaction. Results: Inducing a temporary attentional bias for self-defined unattractive body parts led to a significant decrease in body satisfaction and teaching body-dissatisfied women to attend to their own attractive body parts led to a significant increase in body satisfaction. Conclusion: Selective attention for unattractive body parts can play a role in the development of body dissatisfaction, and changing the way one looks may be a new way for improving body dissatisfaction in women. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved) (journal abstract

Happy eating: the single target implicit association test predicts overeating after positive emotions

For many years, questionnaires have been considered the standard when examining emotional eating behavior. However, recently, some controversy has arisen about these questionnaires, and their usefulness in identifying emotional eaters has been questioned. The current study aimed to investigate the Single Target Implicit Association Test (ST-IAT) as a measure of emotional eating. Two ST-IATs (assessing food-positive and food-negative associations respectively) and the Dutch Eating Behaviour Questionnaire (DEBQ) were compared in undergraduate students. A positive, negative or neutral mood was induced by means of a film clip, and milkshake consumption was measured during and after the mood induction. It was hypothesized that participants with strong emotion-food associations on the ST-IATs (i.e., IAT-emotional eaters) would consume more food in the emotion induction condition corresponding to that emotion, as compared to those with weak emotion-food associations as well as to those in the neutral condition. Participants who scored high on both the positive and negative ST-IATs ate more during a positive mood induction than during a negative mood induction. This effect did not extend to milkshake consumption after the mood induction procedure. In addition, IAT-positive emotional eaters consumed more food than IAT-non-emotional eaters. No effects of the DEBQ on milkshake consumption were found. It is concluded that the ST-IAT has potential as a measure of emotional eating

Attentional avoidance of high-fat food in unsuccessful dieters

Using the exogenous cueing task, this study examined whether restrained and disinhibited eaters differ in their orientation of attention towards and their difficulty to disengage from high versus low-fat food pictures in a relatively short (500 ms) and a long presentation format (1500 ms). Overall, participants in the 500 ms condition showed a tendency to direct attention away from high-fat food pictures compared to neutral pictures. No differential pattern was evident for the 1500 ms condition. Correlational analysis revealed that reduced engagement with high-fat food was particularly pronounced for disinhibited eaters. Although in the short term this seems an adaptive strategy, it may eventually become counterproductive, as it could hinder habituation and learning to cope with seductive characteristics of high-fat food. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved

Expectancy violation, reduction of food cue reactivity and less eating in the absence of hunger after one food cue exposure session for overweight and obese women

The present study investigated whether a single-session of food cue exposure for overweight women would decrease 'if CS then US' expectancies, cue reactivity and eating in the absence of hunger (EAH). EAH was measured in a behavioural paradigm that enabled to also investigate whether the cue exposure effects were specific for exposed foods or would generalise to food items that were not present during exposure. Overweight women were randomly assigned to either the cue exposure intervention or a control intervention that focused on body image. In line with the hypotheses, results showed that cue exposure induced a significant decrease in 'if CS then US' expectancies, in contrast to the control intervention. It was also found that, compared to the control intervention, desires to eat initially increased during cue exposure while gradual extinction was observed towards the end of the intervention. No extinction of increased salivation responses was found. Regarding EAH, the intake of the exposed food item was significantly less in the exposure condition than in the control condition, whereas total caloric food intake was not different between conditions, indicating that cue exposure was effective in reducing intake but did not generalise to the intake of other food items. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved

Heightened Attentional Capture by Visual Food Stimuli in Anorexia Nervosa

The present study was designed to test the hypothesis that anorexia nervosa (AN) patients are relatively insensitive to the attentional capture of visual food stimuli. Attentional avoidance of food might help AN patients to prevent more elaborate processing of food stimuli and the subsequent generation of craving, which might enable AN patients to maintain their strict diet. Participants were 66 restrictive AN spectrum patients and 55 healthy controls. A single-target rapid serial visual presentation task was used with food and disorder-neutral cues as critical distracter stimuli and disorder-neutral pictures as target stimuli. AN spectrum patients showed diminished task performance when visual food cues were presented in close temporal proximity of the to-be-identified target. In contrast to our hypothesis, results indicate that food cues automatically capture AN spectrum patients' attention. One explanation could be that the enhanced attentional capture of food cues in AN is driven by the relatively high threat value of food items in AN. Implications and suggestions for future research are discussed. General Scientific Summary The current study tested the hypothesis that people with anorexia nervosa show attentional avoidance of food. This might help them to persist in their restrictive food intake. In contrast with the hypothesis, it was shown that anorexia patients were highly distracted by food pictures compared to healthy controls

Automatic approach tendencies toward high and low caloric food in restrained eaters:Influence of task-relevance and mood

Objective: Although restrained eaters are motivated to control their weight by dieting, they are often unsuccessful in these attempts. Dual process models emphasize the importance of differentiating between controlled and automatic tendencies to approach food. This study investigated the hypothesis that heightened automatic approach tendencies in restrained eaters would be especially prominent in contexts where food is irrelevant for their current tasks. Additionally, we examined the influence of mood on the automatic tendency to approach food as a function of dietary restraint. Methods: An Affective Simon Task-manikin was administered to measure automatic approach tendencies where food is task-irrelevant, and a Stimulus Response Compatibility task (SRC) to measure automatic approach in contexts where food is task-relevant, in 92 female participants varying in dietary restraint. Prior to the task, sad, stressed, neutral, or positive mood was induced. Food intake was measured during a bogus taste task after the computer tasks. Results: Consistent with their diet goals, participants with a strong tendency to restrain their food intake showed a relatively weak approach bias toward food when food was task-relevant (SRC) and this effect was independent of mood. Restrained eaters showed a relatively strong approach bias toward food when food was task-irrelevant in the positive condition and a relatively weak approach in the sad mood. Conclusion: The weak approach bias in contexts where food is task-relevant may help high-restrained eaters to comply with their diet goal. However, the strong approach bias in contexts where food is task-irrelevant and when being in a positive mood may interfere with restrained eaters' goal of restricting food-intake