Thesis (Ph. D.)--West Virginia University, 1998. / Title from document title page. Document formatted into pages; contains ix, 122 p. : ill. Includes abstract. Includes bibliographical references (p. 112-117).

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The purpose of this study was to test the hypothesis that Dieters would have less variation between their pre and post prandial ratings than Non-dieters. We compared 159 female college students’ hunger and satiety ratings before and after their consumption of a 420 calorie portion of Entemann’s Butter French Crumb Cake and a 9oz cup of water. Dieter status was assigned by questionnaire responses to Lowes’ Diet and Weight History Questionnaire (Lowe, Kissileff, 2005) yielding 96 Dieters and 63 Non-dieters. Methods: The primary assumption was that of our 159 participants, the 96 Dieters, because of their lack of familiarity in using hunger and satiation as a behavioral strategy to initiate or stop eating, would demonstrate less of a difference between their fasted and fed ratings than the 63 Non-dieters. We studied whether the participants’ BMI was a factor associated with their hunger and satiety ratings and whether their ‘restraint’ level was correlated with their status as a Dieter or Non-dieter and BMI by group and the number of times participants lost weight [a component of the Early Family Eating Behavior construct. Analyses by diet group status, Restraint level and BMI were performed for the difference in hunger to fullness ratings, Race, SES, Early Family Eating Behavior and for Taste, both Prop {bitter taste} sweet taste and the sweetness of coke. Two constructs, one focused on hunger utilization and one focused on Compensation assessed the 159 participants’ implementation of these concepts. Results: Contrary to expectation, all 159 female college participants rated their fed scores higher than their fasted scores on the Visual Analogue Scale [VAS] question that asked “How Physically Full Do You Feel”. This yielded a significant result with a t of -12.0558 and a p-value of 0.000. We found that there were no significant hunger and fullness rating differences between the Dieters and Non-dieters in this study. BMI varied by group [t of 5.2467 and a p of 0.000] with a [mean of 26.72343 ± .605001] for the 96 dieters compared with a [mean BMI of 22.8090 ±.437262] for the 63 Non-dieters and this was a significant finding. The Dieters’ Restraint scores were higher [mean of 11.14583 ±- .4125177] than the Non-dieters Restraint scores [mean of 6.047619 ± .5016249] and this was a significant finding [t of 7.8499 and a p-value of 0.000]. This finding illustrated the Dieters’ engagement in ‘Restrained Diet Behavior’ and was statistically significant. There were significant differences between the Dieters and Non-dieters in their Early Family Eating Behavior Construct scores (with a mean of 3.052083 ± 1.45363 for the Dieters) and for the Non-dieters, a mean of (1.555556 ± .9466031) and a [t of 7.8619 and a p-value of 0.0000] for the differences between the two groups. A Multiple Regression with Compensation as the dependent variable and Restraint, BMI and group as the independent variables was a significant finding for the use of compensation behaviors as measured by the compensation construct and differential use by the two groups [t of -1.97 and p-value of 0.000]. A Multiple Regression with BMI scores as the dependent variable and group, Restraint, Hunger for the Next meal, Sweet taste ratings, Compensator scores, Early family Eating Behaviors, Diet to Avoid Gaining Weight and ‘I wish I weighed less’ as the independent variables showed significance for the EFEB construct [t of 6.18 p-value of 0.00] and ‘I wish I weighed less’ [t of 3.44 and p-value of 0.0001]. BMI was significantly associated with our participants’ class in college [f of 25.03 and p-value of 0.000] their current Age [f of 14.94 and p-value of 0.0002] and BMI was significant for the number of times our participants lost weight, a dichotomous component on the Early Family Eating Behavior Construct where a score of three weight loss attempts or more scored a 1 and two or fewer weight loss attempts was scored a 0 [f of 16.93 and a p-value of 0.0001]. Implications: It was an important finding that a healthy BMI was achieved and maintained by 101 of the 159 {50 were Dieters and 51 were Non-dieters} students in our study. We also found that eating behavior on the college campus today included a focus on ‘watching what they ate in order not to gain weight’ (Nichter, Ritenbaugh, Nichter, Vuckovic, Aicken, 1995) as well as dieting and non-dieting behaviors. Dieting, historically, was believed to be equivalent to Restrained Eating by Polivy and Herman (Herman, Polivy, 1975; Lowe, Foster, Kerzhnerman, Swain, Wadden, 2001 p254)) but there is now debate as to whether Dieting and Restrained Dieting do not reflect the same eating behaviors in those Non-obese, with BMI’s below 30 (Lowe, Doshi, Katteran, Feig, 2013, p1). It is a positive outcome, we believe, that the 63 {Non-dieters} do not to ‘diet’ for weight loss, but our results also indicate that an educational intervention teaching the utilization of hunger and satiety sensations to those ‘chronically dieting’ (46) students with BMI’s outside the normal range is still necessary on the University campus.

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Thesis (PhD)-- Stellenbosch University, 1924. / ENGLISH ABSTRACT: No abstract available / AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING: Sien artikel vir opsomming

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Behavior analysts refer to a decrease in response rate following repeated, contingent presentations of a reinforcing stimulus as a product of satiation. Other evidence suggests that these decreases may often be due to habituation to the sensory properties of the reinforcing stimulus. The investigation reported here sought to determine whether decreases in operant responding by 3 adults with developmental disabilities were due to satiation or habituation. During baseline, participants placed poker chips into a container, and no reinforcement was available. Within subsequent phases, participants received diet lemon-lime soda on a fixed-ratio (FR) schedule of reinforcement. In one condition, the color of the soda was constant throughout the session, and in another condition food coloring was added several minutes into the session. Results for at least 2 participants indicated that: (a) soda functioned as a reinforcer for placing poker chips in the can; (b) response rates decreased within the session to baseline levels; and (c) response rates increased following a change in the color of the soda within the session. Results for the third participant were less clear. The results support the argument made by other researchers that the terms habituation (a weakening of a behavior following contact with the reinforcing stimulus) and stimulus specificity (a strengthening of a behavior following a change in the reinforcing stimulus) may be more appropriate descriptors of within-session changes in responding. The factors associated with habituation and satiation, as well as both basic and applied research examples, are discussed.

Ten experiments examined the interactions between vision and audition in stimulusdriven spatial attention orienting and inhibition of return (IOR). IOR is the demonstration that subjects are slower to respond to stimuli that are presented at a previously stimulated location. In each experiment, subjects made go/no-go responses to peripheral targets but not to central targets. On every trial, a target was preceded by a sensory event, called a "cue," either in the same modality (intramodal conditions) or in a different modality (crossmodal conditions). The cue did not predict the location of the target stimulus in any experiment. In some experiments, the cue and target modalities were fixed and different. Under these conditions, response times to a visual target were shorter when it appeared at the same location as an auditory cue than when it appeared on the opposite side of fixation, particularly at short (100 ms) cue-target stimulus onset asynchronies (Experiments 1A and IB). Similarly, response times to an auditory target were shorter when it appeared at the same location as a visual cue than when it appeared at a location on the opposite side of fixation (Experiments 2A and 2B). These crossmodal effects indicate that stimulus-driven spatial attention orienting might arise from a single supramodal brain mechanism. IOR was not observed in either crossmodal experiment indicating that it might arise from modality specific mechanisms. However, for many subjects, IOR did occur between auditory cues and visual targets (Experiments 3A and 3B) and between visual cues and auditory targets (Experiment 4A and 4B) when the target could appear in the same modality as the cue on half of the trials. Finally, the crossmodal effects of stimulus-driven spatial attention orienting on auditory and visual event-related brain potentials (ERPs) were examined in the final two experiments. Auditory cues modulated the ERPs to visual targets and visual cues modulated the ERPs to auditory targets, demonstrating that the mechanisms for spatial attention orienting cannot be completely modality specific. However, these crossmodal ERP effects were very different from each other indicating that the mechanisms for spatial attention orienting cannot be completely shared.