Schadll Stephan, Rodriguez-Raecke Rea, Heim Lennart, Freiherr Jessica
Diagnostic and Interventional Neuroradiology, RWTH Aachen University, Aachen, Germany.
Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg, Erlangen, Germany.
Front Psychol. 2021 Jul 14;12:657188. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2021.657188. eCollection 2021.
Overweight and obesity are considered a huge problem in modern societies. Previous studies have shown that people who are regularly distracted by playing videogames or watching TV while eating are more likely to be overweight and that the number of people that are gaming worldwide is rising. Further, it has been established that both, watching TV or playing video games lead to an increased snack intake and a lower rating of perceived taste intensity. Since flavor perception is accomplished not only by the sense of taste but also the sense of smell, we investigated the influence of cognitive load created by playing a video game on odor intensity perception. The participants played a low or high difficulty version of Tetris while presented with odors of food and non-food items. A higher skin conductance response (SCR) along with a decrease in task performance verified that the higher difficulty level leads to a higher cognitive load. Our behavioral data indicates a significant decrease in intensity estimates of food odors and non-food odors during the high compared to low cognitive load condition. We conclude that odor intensity estimation is influenced by real-life cognitive tasks which might in turn lead to overeating while distracted.
超重和肥胖被认为是现代社会中的一个巨大问题。先前的研究表明，吃饭时经常被玩电子游戏或看电视分心的人更有可能超重，而且全球玩游戏的人数正在上升。此外，已经证实，看电视或玩电子游戏都会导致零食摄入量增加和味觉强度感知评分降低。由于风味感知不仅通过味觉，还通过嗅觉来完成，我们研究了玩电子游戏产生的认知负荷对气味强度感知的影响。参与者在闻食物和非食物物品的气味时玩低难度或高难度版本的俄罗斯方块。较高的皮肤电反应（SCR）以及任务表现的下降证实了较高的难度水平会导致更高的认知负荷。我们的行为数据表明，与低认知负荷条件相比，高认知负荷条件下食物气味和非食物气味的强度估计值显著下降。我们得出结论，气味强度估计受到现实生活中的认知任务的影响，这反过来可能导致在分心时暴饮暴食。
