di Pellegrino Giuseppe, Magarelli Silvia, Mengarelli Flavia
Center for Studies and Research in Cognitive Neuroscience, University of Bologna, Via Brusi 20, Cesena, Italy.
Q J Exp Psychol (Hove). 2011 Mar;64(3):560-71. doi: 10.1080/17470218.2010.504031. Epub 2010 Sep 10.
Fundamental to adaptive behaviour is the ability to select environmental objects that best satisfy current needs and preferences. Here we investigated whether temporary changes in food preference influence visual selective attention. To this end, we exploited the fact that when a food is eaten to satiety its motivational value and perceived pleasantness decrease relative to other foods not eaten in the meal, an effect termed sensory-specific satiety. A total of 26 hungry participants were fed until sated with one of two palatable foods. Before and after selective satiation, participants rated the pleasantness of the two foods and then viewed the same as stimuli on a computer screen while attention was assessed by a visual probe task. Results showed that the attentional bias for the food eaten decreased markedly from pre- to postsatiety, along with the subjective pleasantness for that food. By contrast, subjective pleasantness and attentional bias for the food not eaten did not show any such decrease. These findings suggest that the allocation of visual selective attention is flexibly and rapidly adjusted to reflect temporary shift in relative preference for different foods.
适应性行为的基础是选择最能满足当前需求和偏好的环境物体的能力。在这里，我们研究了食物偏好的暂时变化是否会影响视觉选择性注意。为此，我们利用了这样一个事实：当一种食物吃到饱腹感时，相对于用餐时未吃的其他食物，其动机价值和感知愉悦感会降低，这种效应称为感官特异性饱腹感。共有26名饥饿的参与者被喂食两种美味食物中的一种直至饱腹。在选择性饱腹感前后，参与者对这两种食物的愉悦感进行评分，然后在电脑屏幕上观看相同的刺激物，同时通过视觉探测任务评估注意力。结果表明，从饱腹感前到饱腹感后，对已吃食物的注意力偏差显著降低，同时该食物的主观愉悦感也降低。相比之下，对未吃食物的主观愉悦感和注意力偏差没有显示出任何此类降低。这些发现表明，视觉选择性注意的分配会灵活快速地调整，以反映对不同食物相对偏好的暂时变化。
