A study of intentional inhibition of food stimuli among female restricted eaters

Abstract

Restrictive eating is the propensity to restrict food consumption to control body weight. Most previous studies have focused on reactive inhibition induced by external cessation signals. Individuals usually engage in intentional inhibition, an internal form of inhibitory control that arises spontaneously in the absence of an explicit external inhibitory signal. However, there has been no clear research on intentional inhibition in restricted eaters. Therefore, the Go/No-Go/Choose experimental paradigm was used in this study to investigate the performance of intentional inhibition among restrained and unrestrained eaters under general stimuli, food stimuli, and food context conditions. The findings showed that only when food stimuli were present did the intentional inhibition of restricted and non-restricted eaters differ. In contrast to non-restricted eaters, restricted eaters significantly inhibit high-calorie foods in favor of low-calorie ones. There was no difference in intentional inhibition responses between the two groups in the non-food-related or food-context conditions, indicating that the intentional inhibition process was specific to restricted/non-restricted eaters.