Dietary restraint and addictive behaviors: the generalizability of Tiffany's cue reactivity model.
Two studies are presented, which examine cue reactivity in dieting.


METHODS
Experiment 1 investigated whether the presence of a preferred food affected dieters' performance on measures of attention, reaction time, and motor speed. The manipulation did not affect the performance. Experiment 2 investigated the performance of dieters (N = 19), highly restrained non-dieters (N = 18) and low-to-medium restrained eaters (N = 34) on two simple reaction time tasks. Subjects were either required to imagine their favorite food or to imagine their favorite holiday while completing a reaction time task.


RESULTS
In the food condition, both dieters and restrained nondieters displayed significantly slower reaction times during the first three of five blocks of the task than the low-to-medium restrained eaters.


CONCLUSIONS
The results are discussed in terms of Tiffany's (Psychological Review 97:147-168, 1990) model of cue reactivity in that different abstinent states produce comparable effects upon performance.
Green
M W
MW
Department of Consumer Sciences, Institute of Food Research, Earley Gate, Whiteknights Road, Reading, RG6 6BZ, United Kingdom. Michael.W.Green@unilever.com
Rogers
P J
PJ
Elliman
N A
NA
D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D001288:Attention; D016739:Behavior, Addictive / Q000523:psychology*; D004038:Diet, Reducing; D005247:Feeding Behavior / Q000523:psychology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D009048:Motor Skills; D011930:Reaction Time