title: A Method for Manipulating Blood Glucose and Measuring Resulting Changes in Cognitive Accessibility of Target Stimuli.
abstract: Much research in social psychology has investigated the impact of bodily energy need on cognition and decision-making. As such, blood glucose, the body's primary energy source, has been of special interest to researchers for years. Fluctuations in blood glucose have been linked to a variety of changes in cognitive and behavioral processes, such as self-control, political attitudes, and eating behavior. To help meet growing interest in the links between bodily energy need and these processes, this manuscript offers a simple methodology to experimentally manipulate blood glucose using a fasting procedure followed by administration of a sugar-sweetened, unsweetened, or artificially-sweetened beverage. This is followed by presentation of a method for measuring resulting changes in implicit cognition using a lexical decision-task. In this task, participants are asked to identify whether strings of letters are words or non-words and response latencies are recorded. Sample results from a recent publication are presented as an example of the applications for the experimental manipulation of blood glucose and the lexical decision task measures.
authors: Department of Psychology, Texas Christian University.
authors: Marjorie L
authors: ML
authors: Prokosch
authors: Department of Psychology, Texas Christian University; s.e.hill@tcu.edu.
authors: Sarah E
authors: SE
authors: Hill
mesh_terms: D001786:Blood Glucose / Q000378:metabolism*; D003071:Cognition / Q000502:physiology*; D003657:Decision Making; D006801:Humans; D011930:Reaction Time
chemical_list: D001786:Blood Glucose