Abstract
Mindfulness-based interventions are thought to reduce compulsive behavior such as overeating by promoting behavioral flexibility. Here the main aim was to provide support for mindfulness-mediated improvements in reversal learning, a direct measure of behavioral flexibility. We investigated whether an 8-week mindful eating intervention improved outcome-based reversal learning relative to an educational cooking (i.e., active control) intervention in a non-clinical population. Sixty-five healthy participants with a wide BMI range (19–35 kg/m2), who were motivated to change their eating habits, performed a deterministic reversal learning task that enabled the investigation of reward- and punishment-based reversal learning at baseline and following the intervention. No group differences in reversal learning were observed. However, time invested in the mindful eating, but not the educational cooking intervention correlated positively with changes in reversal learning, in a manner independent of outcome valence. These findings suggest that greater amount of mindfulness practice can lead to increased behavioral flexibility, which, in turn, might help overcome compulsive eating in clinical populations.
Highlights
Mindfulness has been associated with a multitude of beneficial health outcomes[1,2] and improvements in cognition[3] in clinical as well as non-clinical populations
These findings suggest that overall the mindful eating (ME) intervention did not differentially affect reversal learning relative to educational cooking (EC)
The correlation coefficients differed significantly between groups (Fisher’s z = −2.37, p = 0.018). This suggests that participants who invested more time on the mindful eating intervention improved more in terms of valence-independent reversal learning, whereas no such improvement was observed for participants in the active control group
Summary
Mindfulness has been associated with a multitude of beneficial health outcomes[1,2] and improvements in cognition[3] in clinical as well as non-clinical populations. Mindfulness-based interventions targeted at compulsive eating behavior have been shown effective in reducing measures of overeating in healthy[17,18], overweight and clinically obese participants[19,20,21], as well as in individuals suffering from binge-eating disorder[22,23] (but see[24]). To investigate the effect of mindful eating on reversal learning, sixty-five healthy human volunteers with a wide BMI range (19–35 kg/m2) participated in the study. They were motivated to change their undesired eating behavior (e.g. occasional overeating) and were tested before and after an intensive 8-week mindful eating intervention. To contribute to the growing literature on the effectiveness of mindful eating interventions in reducing measures of overeating, the secondary aim of the study was to assess the effects of both interventions on physical measures of obesity, i.e., BMI, waist circumference and waist-to-hip ratio, as well as self-reported measures of eating behavior and knowledge of a healthy diet
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