Attentional Bias For Sweet Food Cues And The Effect Of Attentional Bias Modification Among Female College Students

Attentional bias to sweet food cues refers to the selective attention to it relative to the neutral cues or low-energy food cues,containing facilited orientation,attentional maintenance or avoidance.Attentional bias midification to sweet food cues refers to moderate individuals' attention to strenthen or reduce the attention to sweet food cues through a series of training.The present study includes two parts,the first part is behavioral research which explore attentional bias towards high-calorie sweet food cues and the other is an eye-movement which explore the effect of attentional bias modification using anti-saccade training or pro-saccade training.In experiment 1,we used spatial cueing task to invesgate attentional bias towards sweet food cues compared with low-calorie food cues and neutralcues among female college students and explore the components of the attentional bias when the stimulus were presented for 200 ms and 500 ms respectively.The sample were 52 females from the undergraduate population of the ZhengZhou University and all of them are normal weight(18.5<BMI<24.99).It's a 2(stimulus presentation duration:200ms or 500ms)x2(stimulus type: sweet food cues or low calorie food cues or neutral cues)x2(cues type : valid cues or invalid cues)mixed design.In experiment 2,we used eye-movement techology to investigate the effect of attentional bias modifacation.42 female college students were trained to direct their attention toward(pro-saccade training)or away(anti-saccade training)from high-calorie sweet food.We used first fixation direction bias,first fixation duration bias and dwell time bias toward high-calorie sweet food cues as dependent variables.It's a 2(test time:pretest or posttest)x2(group:attend group or avoid group)mixed design.The ANOVA in experiment 1 showed participants on valid trials showed significantly shorter response latencies when the cues was sweet food picture relative to neutral and low calorie food picture when the presentation durationwas 200 ms,but There was no significant difference latencies between neutral and low calorie food.participants on invalid trials showed significantly longer response latencies when the cues was sweet food picture relative to neutral and low calorie food picture when the presentation durationwas 500 ms,but There was also no significant difference between neutral and low calorie food.The ANOVA in experiment 2 showed the avoid group showed decreasd first fixation dwelling time bias and total dwelling time bias on sweet food after anti-saccade training as expected but no differences on first fixation orineting bias,and the attend group showed increased first fixation orineting bias and dwelling time bias on sweet food after pro-saccade training but no differences ontotal dwelling time bias.It suggested that saccade training is effective on moderating attention bias to sweet food cues of female college students.(1)The female college students show vigilance-maintenance pattern towards sweet food cues compared with low-calorie food cues and neutral cues,with early orienting on the duration of 200 ms and attention maintenance on the duration of 500 ms as expected,but they had no attentional bias towards low-calorie food cues compared with neutral cues.(2)Saccade training task can moderate femal college students' attentional bias to sweet food cues effectively.Anti-saccade training could reduce the early and total maintenance,strenthening participants' attention diengagement from sweet food cues.Pro-saccade training strenthen their attention maintenance and maybe the orientation.