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Whether or not to eat: a controlled laboratory study of discriminative cueing effects on food intake in humans

journal contribution
posted on 2023-06-08, 21:54 authored by Thomas L Ridley-Siegert, Hans CrombagHans Crombag, Martin YeomansMartin Yeomans
There is a wealth of data showing a large impact of food cues on human ingestion, yet most studies use picture of food where the precise nature of the associations between the cue and food are unclear.To test whether novel cues which were associated with the opportunity of winning access to food images could also impact ingestion. 63 participants participated in a game in which novel visual cues signalled whether responding on a keyboard would win (a picture of) chocolate, crisps, or nothing. Thirty minutes later, participants were given an ad libitum snack-intake test during which the chocolate-paired cue, the crisp-paired cue, the non-winning cue or no cue were presented as labels on the food containers. The presence of these cues significantly altered overall intake of the snack foods; participants presented with food labelled with the cue that had been associated with winning chocolate ate significantly more than participants who had been given the same products labelled with the cue associated with winning nothing, and in the presence of the cue signalling the absence of food reward participants tended to eat less than all other conditions. Surprisingly, cue-dependent changes in food consumption was unaffected by participants' level of contingency awareness. These results suggest that visual cues that have been pre-associated with winning, but not consuming, a liked food reward modify food intake consistent with current ideas that the abundance of food associated cues may be one factor underlying the 'obesogenic environment'.

History

Publication status

  • Published

Journal

Physiology and Behavior

ISSN

0031-9384

Publisher

Elsevier

Issue

B

Volume

152

Page range

347-353

Department affiliated with

  • Psychology Publications

Full text available

  • No

Peer reviewed?

  • Yes

Legacy Posted Date

2015-07-28

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