Trial on the Effect of Media Multi-tasking on Attention to Food Cues and Cued Overeating
Condition: Attention Concentration Difficulty; Obesity, Childhood
MeSH terms: Pediatric Obesity; Hyperphagia
Study type: Interventional

Summary: 
      Childhood obesity is a critical public health problem in the United States. One factor known
      to contribute to childhood obesity is excess consumption. Importantly, excess consumption
      related to weight gain is not necessarily driven by hunger. For example, environmental food
      cues stimulate brain reward regions and lead to overeating even after a child has eaten to
      satiety. This type of cued eating is associated with increased attention to food cues; the
      amount of time a child spends looking at food cues (e.g., food advertisements) is associated
      with increased caloric intake. However, individual susceptibility to environmental food cues
      remains unknown. It is proposed that the prevalent practice of media
      multi-tasking-simultaneously attending to multiple electronic media sources-increases
      attention to peripheral food cues in the environment and thereby plays an important role in
      the development of obesity. It is hypothesized that multi-tasking teaches children to engage
      in constant task switching that makes them more responsive to peripheral cues, many of which
      are potentially harmful (such as those that promote overeating). The overarching hypothesis
      is that media multi-tasking alters the attentional networks of the brain that control
      attention to environmental cues. High media multi-tasking children are therefore particularly
      susceptible to food cues, thereby leading to increased cued eating. It is also predicted that
      attention modification training can provide a protective effect against detrimental
      attentional processing caused multi-tasking, by increasing the proficiency of the attention
      networks. These hypotheses will be tested by assessing the pathway between
      media-multitasking, attention to food cues, and cued eating. It will also be examined whether
      it is possible to intervene on this pathway by piloting an at-home attention modification
      training intervention designed to reduce attention to food cues. It is our belief that this
      research will lead to the development of low-cost, scalable tools that can train attention
      networks so that children are less influenced by peripheral food cues, a known cause of
      overeating. For example, having children practice attention modification intervention tasks
      regularly (which could be accomplished through user-friendly computer games or cell
      phone/tablet apps) might offset the negative attentional effects of media multi-tasking.
    

Detailed description: 
      [3/14/2020]: Study recruitment temporarily halted due to the COVID-19 pandemic
    

Intervention name(s): Sustained attention; media multi-task; Video
Intervention type(s): Behavioral; Behavioral; Other
Intervention description(s): participants will complete a sustained attention task; participants will complete multiple media tasks at the same time; participants will watch a video of media tasks being completed
Allocation: Randomized
Intervention model: Crossover Assignment
Intervention model description: This is a within-subject design where each participant is randomly assigned to all three arms.
Masking: Single (Participant)
Primary purpose: Prevention
Keywords: Attention; Food cues; Media multi-tasking