Racine Sarah E, Horvath Sarah A, Brassard Sarah L, Benning Stephen D
Department of Psychology, McGill University, Montréal, Québec, Canada.
Department of Psychology, Ohio University, Athens, Ohio.
Int J Eat Disord. 2018 Dec 31. doi: 10.1002/eat.22999.
Binge eating and associated eating disorders are characterized by abnormalities in reward processing. One component of reward is willingness to expend effort to obtain a reinforcer. The Effort Expenditure for Rewards Task (EEfRT) is a widely used behavioral measure of willingness to work for money. We sought to modify the EEfRT to examine willingness to work for food reward and to preliminarily examine the association between binge eating and effort expenditure for food.
Participants were 63 females recruited to span the spectrum of binge-eating severity. The modified EEfRT required participants to make a series of choices between an easier, low-reward option (one portion of food) and a harder, high-reward option (between two to five portions of food). Each trial also varied on probability of winning.
Participants self-reported engagement in the task, working hard at easy and hard tasks, and making choices based on reward probability and magnitude. As with the original EEfRT, probability, reward magnitude, and their interaction predicted the likelihood of choosing the hard task. Across two different measures, binge-eating symptoms interacted with reward magnitude, such that those with high binge eating used reward magnitude more to make trial choices than those with low binge eating.
These data provide initial support for the validity of the EEfRT modified for food as a behavioral measure of willingness to work for food reward. The impact of binge eating on effort expenditure must be replicated in samples of patients with eating disorders.
暴饮暴食及相关饮食失调的特征在于奖励处理异常。奖励的一个组成部分是为获得强化物而付出努力的意愿。奖励努力支出任务（EEfRT）是一种广泛使用的衡量为金钱工作意愿的行为指标。我们试图修改EEfRT，以检验为食物奖励而工作的意愿，并初步检验暴饮暴食与为食物付出努力之间的关联。
招募了63名女性参与者，她们涵盖了暴饮暴食严重程度的各个范围。修改后的EEfRT要求参与者在一个较容易、低奖励选项（一份食物）和一个较难、高奖励选项（两到五份食物）之间做出一系列选择。每次试验在获胜概率上也有所不同。
参与者自我报告参与了任务，在简单和困难任务上都努力工作，并根据奖励概率和大小做出选择。与原始的EEfRT一样，概率、奖励大小及其相互作用预测了选择困难任务的可能性。在两种不同的测量方法中，暴饮暴食症状与奖励大小相互作用，因此，与暴饮暴食程度低的人相比，暴饮暴食程度高的人在试验选择中更多地利用奖励大小。
这些数据为修改后的用于食物的EEfRT作为衡量为食物奖励而工作意愿的行为指标的有效性提供了初步支持。暴饮暴食对努力支出的影响必须在饮食失调患者样本中得到重复验证。
