Abstract
In the current study we examined an associative learning mechanism by which food cues (signaling low- versus high-calorie food) can bias instrumental responses directed toward those foods. To investigate the clinical relevance of this mechanism, we used a computerized Pavlovian-to-instrumental transfer task and compared performance of 19 severely obese individuals to that of 19 healthy-weight controls matched for age, education and gender. During the response-priming test we exposed participants to both food pictures and to Pavlovian cues predictive of those food pictures, and examined their biasing effect on instrumental choice. As expected, obese participants showed higher priming rates for palatable, high-calorie foods (potato chips and chocolate) relative to low-calorie foods (lettuce and courgette) whereas healthy-weight individuals did not show a difference between priming rates for these two food types. We also included various measures of impulsivity as well as a slips-of-action task designed to investigate the balance between goal-directed and habitual behavioral control in these two groups. We did not find any evidence of increased impulsivity or reliance on a habitual strategy during the slips-of-action task, in obese participants.General Scientific Summary: Our environment is full of cues signaling the availability of tasty, but often unhealthy, foods. This study suggests that severely obese individuals are particularly sensitive to high-calorie food cues whereas low-calorie food cues have little effect on their behavior.
Highlights
It has been argued that maladaptive food seeking and excess weight gain can be best understood from a learning theory perspective (Jansen, 1998; Bouton, 2011; Boutelle and Bouton, 2015)
These effects are relevant for understanding the mechanism by which our obesogenic environment, filled with cues signaling the availability of tasty food, Cue-elicited Food Seeking in Obesity can lead to maladaptive food-seeking behavior and to obesity (Cohen, 2008; Swinburn et al, 2011; Johnson, 2013)
This study demonstrates that for obese individuals the biasing effects of external food cues on instrumental choice behavior are potent in the context of highrelative to low-calorie food outcomes
Summary
It has been argued that maladaptive food seeking and excess weight gain can be best understood (and treated) from a learning theory perspective (Jansen, 1998; Bouton, 2011; Boutelle and Bouton, 2015). It has previously been argued that these associative response-priming mechanisms enable the obesogenic environment to trigger maladaptive food-seeking behavior (Swinburn et al, 2011; Watson et al, 2014, 2016) In support of this claim, we showed that the PIT effect is not diminished by specific satiation on the signaled food outcome (Watson et al, 2014) and that PIT in adolescents tends to be more pronounced with high- than with low-calorie snacks (Watson et al, 2016). To investigate this claim more directly, the present study investigates whether S-O-R priming with highcalorie snacks is potent in obese (as opposed to healthy weight) individuals
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