GW4 21-22: Devaluation effects in food-specific response inhibition training: An independent conceptual replication
Creators: name: Tzavella, Loukia
name: Pennington, Charlotte
name: Jones, Andrew
name: Button, Katherine
name: Skubera, Magda
name: Chan, Sze
name: Denman, Alice
name: Gabe-Jones, Celyn
name: Caddle, Annie
name: mushongah, mayibongwe
name: Abdullahi, Faduma
name: Nemeth, Diana
name: Thompson, Sharon
name: Aboaba, Esther
name: Roberts, Eleanor
name: Zain
Publisher: name: Open Science Framework
Year: 2022
Subjects: subject: Health Psychology
subject: Social Psychology
subject: Cognition and Perception
subject: Social and Behavioral Sciences
subject: Psychology
subject: FOS: Psychology
subject: eating behaviour
subject: food
subject: food ratings
subject: food-specific response inhibition training
subject: healthy eating
subject: inhibitory control training
subject: response inhibition training

description: Food-specific inhibitory control training (F-ICT) is a behavioural intervention in which participants learn to associate certain food-types with the inhibition of behaviour. Research has demonstrated the effectiveness of such training in reducing food evaluations (e.g., Chen et al., 2016; Chen, Veling, de Vries, et al., 2018; Veling et al., 2013a), changing food choices (e.g., Veling et al., 2013b; Veling, Chen, et al., 2017), decreasing food intake (e.g., Lawrence, Verbruggen, et al., 2015; also see Allom et al., 2016) and even promoting weight loss (Lawrence, O’Sullivan, et al., 2015; Nederkoorn et al., 2010; Veling et al., 2014; see Jones et al., 2016 for a meta-analysis). This has led some researchers to suggest that F-ICT may be a cost-effective intervention with clinical utility (Carbine &amp; Larson, 2019; Jones et al., 2016, 2018). One explanation for the effectiveness of F-ICT on health-related outcomes is provided by the Behaviour Stimulus Interaction (BSI) theory (Chen et al., 2016; Veling et al., 2008; Veling, Lawrence, et al., 2017), which proposes that during training food stimuli are devalued to reduce the response conflict caused by the need to inhibit motor responses towards (highly) appetitive items and thus facilitate task performance. In a series of six experiments using the Go/No-Go Task, Chen et al. (2016) examined the effect of of food-specific response inhibition training on stimulus devaluation by pairing appetitive stimuli with cues to respond (go stimuli) or with cues to not respond (no-go cues or the absence of cues). Providing evidence of stimulus devaluation, findings indicated that attractiveness ratings of no-go foods reduced after training whilst ratings of go-foods increased. This effect was then replicated in two preregistered experiments (Chen, Veling, Dijksterhuis, et al., 2018) and across obese and normal-weight individuals (Chen, Veling, de Vries, et al., 2018), showing consistently that no-go foods were rated as less attractive post-training compared to go-foods and untrained foods. The aim of the current study is to conceptually replicate the devaluation effect found by Chen et al. (2016) for food attractiveness ratings in a high-powered and representative sample, as well as exploring potential moderators of these effects.