Department of Clinical Psychology, Faculty of Behavioral and Social Sciences, University of Groningen, Grote Kruisstraat 2-1, 9712 TS Groningen, The Netherlands.
Appetite. 2013 May;64:5-11. doi: 10.1016/j.appet.2012.12.013. Epub 2012 Dec 29.
Although restrained eaters try to limit their food intake, they often fail and indulge in exactly those foods that they want to avoid. A possible explanation is a temporal attentional bias for food cues. It could be that for these people food stimuli are processed relatively efficiently and require less attentional resources to enter awareness. Once a food stimulus has captured attention, it may be preferentially processed and granted prioritized access to limited cognitive resources. This might help explain why restrained eaters often fail in their attempts to restrict their food intake. A Rapid Serial Visual Presentation task consisting of dual and single target trials with food and neutral pictures as targets and/or distractors was administered to restrained (n=40) and unrestrained (n=40) eaters to study temporal attentional bias. Results indicated that (1) food cues did not diminish the attentional blink in restrained eaters when presented as second target; (2) specifically restrained eaters showed an interference effect of identifying food targets on the identification of preceding neutral targets; (3) for both restrained and unrestrained eaters, food cues enhanced the attentional blink; (4) specifically in restrained eaters, food distractors elicited an attention blink in the single target trials. In restrained eaters, food cues get prioritized access to limited cognitive resources, even if this processing priority interferes with their current goals. This temporal attentional bias for food stimuli might help explain why restrained eaters typically have difficulties maintaining their diet rules.
尽管节食者试图限制他们的食物摄入量，但他们经常失败，并沉迷于他们试图避免的食物。一种可能的解释是对食物线索的暂时注意力偏向。对于这些人来说，食物刺激可能被相对有效地处理，并且需要较少的注意力资源来进入意识。一旦食物刺激引起了注意，它可能会被优先处理，并优先获得有限的认知资源。这可能有助于解释为什么节食者经常无法成功地限制他们的食物摄入量。一项快速序列视觉呈现任务，包括双目标和单目标试验，使用食物和中性图片作为目标和/或干扰物，对节食者（n=40）和非节食者（n=40）进行了测试，以研究暂时的注意力偏向。结果表明：（1）当食物线索作为第二个目标呈现时，它们并没有减少节食者的注意力眨眼；（2）特别是节食者在识别食物目标时，对之前的中性目标的识别会产生干扰效应；（3）对于节食者和非节食者来说，食物线索都会增强注意力眨眼；（4）特别是在节食者中，食物干扰物在单目标试验中引起了注意力眨眼。在节食者中，食物线索会优先获得有限的认知资源，即使这种处理优先级会干扰他们当前的目标。这种对食物刺激的暂时注意力偏向可能有助于解释为什么节食者通常难以维持他们的饮食规则。
