The attentional system has evolved to be proficient at responding to the presence of food cues, particularly to those which are energy dense (Berthoud, 2007). Individuals who pay heightened attention to food stimuli within their feeding environment are likely to be motivated to overeat as a consequence. This current thesis presents 6 experiments which explore the extent to which paying enhanced attention to food cues in the environment influences eating behaviour. Experiment 1 established that individuals who are responsive to the pull of food cues, sensitive to reward and have high disinhibition are at risk of developing obesity. Experiment 2 demonstrated that individuals with high disinhibition were quicker to respond to high calorie food stimuli shown on a visual dot probe task. Whereas experiment 3 indicated that attentional retraining (learning to attend or avoid food stimuli on a visual dot probe task) could successfully manipulate food processing bias and calorie intake. Experiments 4 and 5 investigated the extent to which reward can determine the incentive salience of cues. Novel cues which had been paired with chocolate reward during a training task were found to elicite greater attention both at a behavioural and neurophysiological level. Finally Experiment 6 demonstrated that these trained cues could successfully manipulate craving. These results are discussed in terms of theoretical perspectives of attentional bias and the wider implications for understanding overeating.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bl.uk/oai:ethos.bl.uk:678438 |
| Date | January 2012 |
| Creators | Seage, Catherine Heidi |
| Publisher | Swansea University |
| Source Sets | Ethos UK |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Source | https://cronfa.swan.ac.uk/Record/cronfa42953 |
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