Food for Thought: Is the Obesity Epidemic a reflection of our Attentional Bias to Food?
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1
Southern Cross University, Health and Human Sciences, Australia
Aims: The Incentive Sensitization Theory suggests that regular exposure to pleasurable stimuli, such as drugs or food, influences the reward system of the brain causing attention to be attracted to these stimuli. Recent research has shown that the activation of the brain due to constant exposure to high calorie food may play a role in the development and maintenance of obesity (Castellanos, Charboneau, Dietrich, Park, Bradley, Mogg & Cowan, 2009). We conducted an eye-tracking study to investigate whether individuals with a high Body Mass Index (BMI) show an heightened attentional bias towards images of high calorie foods compared to low BMI individuals. We also asked whether there is a general tendency for participants to have an attentional bias towards images of high calorie foods compared to low calorie foods and non-food images.
Method: Thirty seven participants completed a combined eye-tracking and visual-dot probe task. Paired images of food and non-food items were presented for either 200ms or 2000ms. Participants then responded to the orientation of paired dots located at one of the image positions, and eye movements were recorded. Measures of both gaze direction bias (attentional orientation) and gaze duration bias (attentional maintenance) were obtained, and reaction time to the dot probe recorded.
Results: When images of high calorie food were paired with images of low-calorie food or non-food items, there was a significant direction bias towards the high calorie food image at both 500 ms and 1000 ms. There was also a significant attentional duration bias toward high calorie foods for the 500ms stimuli, but no bias was obtained with the 2000ms stimuli. We did not find any effect of BMI on either direction or duration bias.
Conclusion: These data show that participants, regardless of their BMI, initially orient their attention towards high calorie food images, and also maintain attention on these images, at least for short time periods.
References
Castellanos, E. H., Charboneau, E., Dietrich, M. S., Park, S., Bradley, B. P., Mogg, K., & Cowan, R. L. (2009). Obese adults have visual attention bias for food cue images: Evidence for altered reward system function. International Journal Of Obesity, 33, 1063-1073. doi: 10.1038/ijo.2009.138
Keywords:
attentional bias,
eye tracking,
obseity,
Food,
incentive sensitisation
Conference:
Australasian Society for Psychophysiology, Inc, Coffs Harbour, Australia, 26 Nov - 28 Nov, 2014.
Presentation Type:
Oral Presentation
Topic:
Psychophysiology
Citation:
Brogmus
K and
Bowling
A
(2014). Food for Thought: Is the Obesity Epidemic a reflection of our Attentional Bias to Food?.
Conference Abstract:
Australasian Society for Psychophysiology, Inc.
doi: 10.3389/conf.fnhum.2014.216.00002
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Received:
03 Oct 2014;
Published Online:
02 Dec 2014.
*
Correspondence:
Dr. Alison Bowling, Southern Cross University, Health and Human Sciences, Coffs Harbour, NSW, 2450, Australia, alison.bowling@scu.edu.au