title: Reduced Inhibition of Return to Food Images in Obese Individuals.
abstract: Previous research has shown that obese individuals may be biased towards attending to food over non-food information, and this bias may contribute to the development and/or maintenance of obesity. The present study sought to extend our understanding of maladaptive attentional processing in this population by investigating whether obese individuals have difficulty in disengaging attention from food compared with non-food images, relative to normal-weight controls. To address this question, we measured inhibition of return (IOR) in an attentional cueing task. The participants were 29 obese and 35 normal-weight satiated females without eating disorders. The obese group displayed less IOR to food images than the normal-weight group, while there was no difference in IOR between the groups for non-food images. This suggests that obese females have greater difficulty disengaging attention from food than normal-weight females. Our findings provide a new focus for studies investigating maintenance factors in obesity and are discussed in relation to a theory of incentive-sensitisation.
authors.affiliation: Research School of Psychology, Australian National University, Canberra, ACT, Australia.
authors.forename: Megan A
authors.initials: MA
authors.lastname: Carters
authors.affiliation: Research School of Psychology, Australian National University, Canberra, ACT, Australia.
authors.forename: Elizabeth
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Rieger
authors.affiliation: Research School of Psychology, Australian National University, Canberra, ACT, Australia; ARC Centre of Excellence in Cognition and its Disorders, School of Psychology, University of Western Australia, Perth, WA, Australia.
authors.forename: Jason
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Bell
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D001288:Attention / Q000502:physiology*; D016022:Case-Control Studies; D003463:Cues; D005247:Feeding Behavior / Q000502:physiology / Q000523:psychology*; D005260:Female; D006185:Habituation, Psychophysiologic; D006801:Humans; D007175:Impulsive Behavior / Q000502:physiology; D007266:Inhibition, Psychological; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D009765:Obesity / Q000503:physiopathology / Q000523:psychology*; D014796:Visual Perception; D055815:Young Adult