Abstract
More than 80% of obese adolescents will become obese adults, and it is therefore important to enhance insight into characteristics that underlie the development and maintenance of overweight and obesity at a young age. The current study is the first to focus on attentional biases towards rewarding and punishing cues as potentially important factors. Participants were young adolescents (N = 607) who were followed from the age of 13 until the age of 19, and completed a motivational game indexing the attentional bias to general cues of reward and punishment. Additionally, self-reported reward and punishment sensitivity was measured. This study showed that attentional biases to cues that signal reward or punishment and self-reported reward and punishment sensitivity were not related to body mass index or the change in body mass index over six years in adolescents. Thus, attentional bias to cues of reward and cues of punishment, and self-reported reward and punishment sensitivity, do not seem to be crucial factors in the development and maintenance of overweight and obesity in adolescents. Exploratory analyses of the current study suggest that the amount of effort to gain reward and to avoid punishment may play a role in the development and maintenance of overweight and obesity. However, since the effort measure was a construct based on face validity and has not been properly validated, more studies are necessary before firm conclusions can be drawn.
Highlights
Overweight and obesity are growing problems in today’s society
The major results of this study can be summarized as follows: in a community cohort of adolescents, (1) attentional biases for general cues of reward and punishment were not related to body mass index (BMI), or to change in BMI over time; (2) self-reported reward and punishment sensitivity were not related to BMI, or change in BMI over time; and (3) a negative relation was found between BMI and the effort that was put in the games with a high chance of receiving punishment
The present study showed that attentional bias to general cues of punishment and selfreported punishment sensitivity were not related to BMI, or change in BMI over six years
Summary
Overweight and obesity are growing problems in today’s society. Both increase the risk of developing several diseases, and are related to lower life satisfaction [1]. Between 1980 and 2008, the global prevalence of overweight increased by almost 40% and the prevalence of obesity by nearly 100% [2]. Overweight and obesity are less common in adolescents than in adults, studies indicate that the prevalence of overweight and obesity in this group is increasing even faster than in adults [3,4]. Since more than 80% of obese adolescents will become. PLOS ONE | DOI:10.1371/journal.pone.0157573 July 8, 2016
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