The relationship between reward context and inhibitory control, does it depend on BMI, maladaptive eating, and negative affect?

Afework Tsegaye,Cuiling Guo,Gyöngyi Kökönyei,Gijsbert Stoet,H N Alexander Logemann,Renata Cserjési

doi:10.1186/s40359-021-00712-5

Abstract

BackgroundRecent studies suggest that higher Body Mass Index (BMI) is associated with reduced inhibitory control in contexts of palatable food. However, due to limitations of previous studies, it remained the question whether this reduction is specific to food contexts, and whether it generalizes to other contexts of reward, such as money. This main question was addressed in the current study. In addition, we explored the effect of maladaptive eating and stress regarding inhibitory control across the contexts that differed in terms of reward.MethodsIn total, 46 participants between 19 and 50 years old (39% males and 61% females) with an average BMI of 23.5 (SD = 3.9) participated. Participants filled out questionnaires and performed a go/no-go task (indexing inhibitory control) with three conditions (neutral, food, and money condition).ResultsRelatively high (above median) BMI was associated with challenged inhibitory control in the food relative to the neutral context, but not in the money relative to neutral context. Explorative analyses suggested that maladaptive eating and stress were associated with reduced inhibitory control in the food context. Only rumination was associated with reduced inhibitory control in the money context.ConclusionsThe effects of BMI, maladaptive eating behavior, and stress on inhibitory control were specific to the food context, and did not generalize to a non-intrinsic reward condition, operationalized with money pictures. Our results imply that (research on) interventions directed at improving inhibitory control in relation to overweight and obesity, should consider food-reward context.

Highlights

Recent studies suggest that higher Body Mass Index (BMI) is associated with reduced inhibitory control in contexts of palatable food
In addition we explored the relationship between maladaptive eating, negative affect on the one hand, and inhibitory control across reward-contexts on the other
Participants that had 40 percent or more omissions in go trials in the GNG task were excluded from data analyses, see Table 2 for the proportion of omission and inhibitions for the final sample (N = 46)

Summary

Introduction

Recent studies suggest that higher Body Mass Index (BMI) is associated with reduced inhibitory control in contexts of palatable food. Due to limitations of previous studies, it remained the question whether this reduction is specific to food contexts, and whether it generalizes to other contexts of reward, such as money. This main question was addressed in the current study. As not everyone develops overweight or obesity in an obesogenic environment, there must be other factors that contribute to weight change [2]. One such plausible factor is inhibitory control, the ability to withhold a prepotent response [3]. Previous studies suggest a bidirectional causal relationship between inhibitory control and BMI, with poor inhibitory control predicting increased BMI [4, Tsegaye et al BMC Psychology (2022) 10:4

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