Research Topic
Creators: name: Tjepkema, Wim
Publisher: name: OSF Registries
Year: 2016

description: Within the domain of eating regulation, it is an established idea that the food choices we make often happen without much deliberation. In terms of dual-process models, it is assumed that merely the perception of palatable foods can trigger impulsive eating behaviour via the associative network, which is not dependent upon cognitive resources or motivation[1-5]. This line of thinking has spawned multiple successful paradigms that aim to reduce people’s impulses toward palatable (high value) food items by changing associations. For example, in evaluative conditioning, palatable food items’ value can be decreased through repeated pairing with a negative stimulus[6], while in go/no-go and stop-signal paradigms, this is facilitated by contrasting palatable food items with a cue (e.g. auditory or pictorial) to which people should not respond, with other food items that have a cue to which should be responded[7-10] (e.g. by button press). 

Notably, a recent paradigm by Schonberg et al.[11], referred to as cued-approach, has shown the opposite. Instead of decreasing people’s impulses toward palatable food items, this paradigm is argued to increase impulses toward food items in general (including low value, healthy food items), with effects lasting up to 4 months after singular training. In this paradigm, certain items are associated with a cue to which should be responded, while simultaneously, responses should be inhibited for items that are not associated with any cue. Due to this cue-pairing, increases in items’ subjective value after training are attributed to greater attention (i.e. salience) toward those items. However, according to Schonberg et al.[11], the performed response’s motor movements also play a yet unaccounted for, but important role in this theory, considering that sole observation of the training yields no effects. 

A possible explanation for these findings might be found within the approach-avoidance literature, where it is argued that ‘approach’ movements (toward an object or oneself) convey a positive motivational state, whereas ‘avoidance’ movements (away from an object or oneself) convey a negative motivational state, which can transfer to paired stimuli (also when disambiguated through visual feedback[12-16]). Considering the contrast that is made within the cued-approach paradigm between responding and not responding, while the response is framed as a movement toward an item (‘press a key when you see/hear a cue’), it can be argued that responding here is essentially an equivalent of making an approach movement. Thus, it might not only be the attentional salience for cued-items that increases their subjective value, but also the inherent motivational quality of the associated response which people have to perform. 

This poses the question whether cued-approach training functions through a similar modus operandi as approach training, rather than merely as an attention enhancer. In order to disentangle both explanations, it is worthwhile to examine the effects of employing avoidance movements within the cued-approach paradigm. If effects are driven by attention, one would expect increased evaluation of items irrespective of the type of movement. If effects are based on the motivational quality of the movement, avoidance should result in devaluation. This is relevant to explore, seeing that ideally a training paradigm would have the ability to decrease impulses toward palatable foods, whilst increasing impulses toward healthy foods. Especially in light of inconsistent findings for the approach-avoidance paradigm within the domain of eating regulation[17,18], while reliable effects have been attained in related domains (e.g. alcohol dependency[2,5,19]). 

In accordance with the above, it is hypothesized that approach training within the cued-approach paradigm increases food items’ subjective value. Effects of avoidance training are exploratorily investigated. The paradigm will be replicated across two studies, which vary in their representation of approach/avoidance movements.