Abstract
There is increasing evidence that individual differences in tendency to overeat relate to impulsivity, possibly by increasing reactivity to food-related cues in the environment. This study tested whether acute exposure to food cues enhanced impulsive and risky responses in women classified on tendency to overeat, indexed by scores on the three factor eating questionnaire disinhibition (TFEQ-D), restraint (TFEQ-R) and hunger scales. Ninety six healthy women completed two measures of impulsive responding (delayed discounting, DDT and a Go No-Go, GNG, task) and a measure of risky decision making (the balloon analogue risk task, BART) as well as questionnaire measures of impulsive behaviour either after looking at a series of pictures of food or visually matched controls. Impulsivity (DDT) and risk-taking (BART) were both positively associated with TFEQ-D scores, but in both cases this effect was exacerbated by prior exposure to food cues. No effects of restraint were found. TFEQ-D scores were also related to more commission errors on the GNG, while restrained women were slower on the GNG, but neither effect was modified by cue exposure. Overall these data suggest that exposure to food cues act to enhance general impulsive responding in women at risk of overeating and tentatively suggest an important interaction between tendency for impulsive decision making and food cues that may help explain a key underlying risk factor for overeating.
Highlights
There has been a dramatic increase in the incidence of overweight and obesity worldwide [1,2], which can be attributed to an imbalance between energy intake and expenditure
delay discounting task (DDT) area under the curve (AUC) decreased with increasing three factor eating questionnaire disinhibition (TFEQ-D) scores [F(1,46) = 26.62, p
The key finding from this study was the first evidence we are aware that pre-exposure to food cues resulted in an increase in impulsive choice measured using the DDT and risky behaviour measured by the BART task for women who scored higher on the TFEQ-D scale, and confirmed that higher scores on TFEQ-D were associated with greater impulsivity measured by the DDT, risk taking measured using BART and impulsive responding on the GNG
Summary
There has been a dramatic increase in the incidence of overweight and obesity worldwide [1,2], which can be attributed to an imbalance between energy intake and expenditure. Even studies that have reported differences in DDT performance between groups can be hard to interpret: for example, both obese binge-eating and non bingeeating were more impulsive than normal weight controls on the DDT, but this effect was not significant once educational status was controlled for [13] Another key component of impulsivity reflects the failure to inhibit an inappropriate response to prepotent stimuli (impulsive action), usually indexed by performance on Go/NoGo (GNG) or Stop signal tasks [29]. Previously we found no overall difference in BART performance between women scoring high or low on TFEQ-D [19], in that study women who had to control their eating prior to the test showed greater risk-taking, which suggests exposure to food cues might lead to riskier behaviour on the BART. We included a questionnaire measure of reward reactivity and inhibition (the Behavioural Inhibition System—Behavioural Approach System—BIS/BAS, [40]) to assess both individual differences on that measure in relation to the behavioural tests and assess whether responses to this trait measure might be affected by exposure to food cues
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