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Effect of Exercise on Attentional Bias to Food in Restrained and Emotional Eaters
| Content Provider | Semantic Scholar |
|---|---|
| Author | O'Gorman, Emily |
| Copyright Year | 2015 |
| Abstract | The goal of the current study was to determine the extent to which exercise or exposure to exercise through exercise-related reading material affect attentional bias to highand low-calorie foods in restrained and emotional eaters. Ninety-three female undergraduates participated for 20 minutes in either an Exercise condition (n = 32), in which they exercised on a stationary bike; an Exercise magazine condition (n = 30), in which they read a magazine about exercise, or a Neutral magazine condition (n = 31), in which they read a magazine that was not about exercise. Attentional bias was assessed prior to and following the exercise manipulation through a dot probe paradigm that used picture pairs consisting of a highor low-calorie food and a non-food object. Restrained eaters relative to unrestrained eaters exhibited an attentional bias away from images of high-calorie foods irrespective of time or condition. Non-emotional eaters, on the other hand, exhibited decreased attention bias towards both highand low-calorie foods following exercise. They also exhibited decreased attentional bias to images of low-calorie foods after reading a neutral magazine. These results suggest responses to highor low-calorie foods in females depend on levels of dietary restraint and that interventions, such as exercise, differentially affect attentional biases to foods depending on the eating habits of the individual. Running Head: EFFECT OF EXERCISE ON ATTENTIONAL BIASES TOWARDS FOOD 3 Table of Contents Introduction ..................................................................................................................................... 4 Restrained Eating ................................................................................................................ 4 Emotional Eating ................................................................................................................ 5 Attentional Bias .................................................................................................................. 6 Exercise ............................................................................................................................... 8 Study Goals and Hypotheses ............................................................................................ 10 Method .......................................................................................................................................... 10 Participants ........................................................................................................................ 10 Materials ........................................................................................................................... 11 Stimuli ................................................................................................................... 11 Measures ............................................................................................................... 11 Questionnaires ....................................................................................................... 12 Procedure .......................................................................................................................... 14 Results ........................................................................................................................................... 16 Participant Characteristics ................................................................................................ 16 Restrained Eating .............................................................................................................. 17 Emotional Eating .............................................................................................................. 17 Discussion ..................................................................................................................................... 18 References ..................................................................................................................................... 24 Running Head: EFFECT OF EXERCISE ON ATTENTIONAL BIASES TOWARDS FOOD 4 Effect of Exercise on Attentional Bias to Food in Restrained and Emotional Eaters In this golden age of all things in excess, the idea of food as a necessity for survival is frequently displaced by the idea of food as a reward, treat, or experience. Unfortunately for our waistlines, these rewards come at a price: recent findings suggest that 69% of American adults over the age of 20 are overweight or obese. With this designation comes a plethora of health risks (Centers for Disease Control, 2012). Though pharmacological and surgical techniques are becoming increasingly common, efforts to ward off obesity or decrease weight typically involve a combination of increased physical activity and decreased caloric consumption (Wadden, Brownell, & Foster 2002). Herman and Mack (1975) first introduced the concept of restrained eating to explain the tendency of some individuals to restrict caloric intake to achieve weight loss or to prevent weight gain. Their efforts are often counterproductive, however, leading restrained eaters to gain weight over time. Various cognitive factors could contribute to restrained eaters’ difficulty in maintaining their dieting goals, leading to subsequent weight gain. A study using brain-imaging techniques found that individuals with higher levels of dietary restraint have heightened responses in brain regions implicated in reward-seeking behaviors while drinking a chocolate milkshake (Burger & Stice, 2010). This does not necessarily indicate that restrained eaters like high fat foods better than unrestrained eaters (Veenstra & de Jong, 2010); rather, it suggests that restrained eaters find these foods more rewarding. It is perhaps as a result of this that restrained eaters exhibit significantly greater automatic approach tendencies towards high-fat food cues than unrestrained eaters (Veenstra & de Jong, 2010). Reward value and automatic approach tendencies are functions of how salient one finds a stimulus. Restrained eaters may find food-related cues more salient than unrestrained eaters, Running Head: EFFECT OF EXERCISE ON ATTENTIONAL BIASES TOWARDS FOOD 5 contributing to their susceptibility to lapses in self-regulation. Some researchers have suggested that restrained eaters are constantly trying to balance two conflicting goals: controlling their weight and satisfying hedonic hunger for desired foods (Stroebe, Papies, & Aarts, 2008). Typically, restrained eaters focus their attention on the goal of weight control, suppressing the goal of obtaining reward through eating. However, triggers, such as exposure to palatable foods (Federoff, Polivy, & Herman, 1997) or advertisements for such foods (Harris, Bargh, & Brownell, 2009), may overwhelm this balance, in effect priming restrained eaters to focus on the hedonic properties of food, such as its palatability and the pleasure derived from eating it (Berridge, 1996). This, in turn, may lead to a lapse in self-regulation (Stroebe et al., 2008). One trigger that may limit restrained eaters’ abilities to self-regulate their intake is negative affect. In a laboratory setting when negative affect was induced, women classified as restrained eaters ate more buttered popcorn than unrestrained eaters or restrained eaters in whom negative affect was not induced (Cools, Schotte, & McNally, 1990). According to affect regulation models, eating serves to reduce negative affect by providing comfort or distracting from negative emotions (Spoor, Bekker, van Strien, & van Heck, 2007). Some researchers, therefore, believe that negative affect results in increased salience of and desire for foods that one finds pleasurable or rewarding (Hepworth, Mogg, Brignell, & Bradley, 2010). Similarly, studies have shown that higher levels of small stressors or daily hassles in one’s work-related, interpersonal, and personal life are associated with increased intake of high-fat and high-sugar snacks (O’Connor, Jones, Conner, McMillan, & Ferguson, 2008). This response to negative emotions may help explain why there is an increased risk of overweight and obesity in populations with depression (Stice, Presnell, Shaw, & Rohde, 2005). Those who respond to these negative emotional states – such as stress, anger, or sadness – by overeating are referred to as Running Head: EFFECT OF EXERCISE ON ATTENTIONAL BIASES TOWARDS FOOD 6 emotional eaters (van Strien, Frijters, Bergers & Defares, 1986). Overall, emotional eaters have been found to exhibit higher levels of food cravings (Hill, Weaver, & Blundell, 1991) and a significantly greater attentional bias towards food-related cues than non-emotional eaters (Brignell, Griffiths, Bradley, & Mogg, 2009). Attentional bias refers to preferential orientation of attention towards and/or difficulty shifting attention away from certain stimuli in the environment. It is considered to be an automatic process that occurs outside of conscious awareness. Attentional bias towards food has been linked to increased hunger, craving for food, and risk of obesity (Werthmann, Field, Roefs, Nederkoorn, & Jansen, 2014; Yokum et al., 2011). For example, in one study examining the relationship between craving and attentional bias, habitual chocolate-cravers were found to exhibit greater attentional bias towards chocolate-related visual cues than they did towards nonchocolate related cues and relative to non-chocolate-cravers (Kemps & Tiggemann, 2009). This phenomenon was observed following attentional training in the lab as well. Participants who were trained to orient towards chocolate cues through an anti-saccade task then consumed more chocolate relative to those who had been trained to orient their attention towards neutral stimuli (Werthmann et al., 2014). Although some studies have shown that restrained eaters exhibit attentional biases for food-related stimuli (Brignell et al. |
| File Format | PDF HTM / HTML |
| Alternate Webpage(s) | https://scholarworks.wm.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1226&context=honorstheses |
| Language | English |
| Access Restriction | Open |
| Content Type | Text |
| Resource Type | Article |
