•Children were asked to taste various foods and feel various tactile stimuli.•Liking of the foods appeared related to liking of the tactile stimuli.•The correlation was higher in younger children ...(4–7.5 years).•Sensitivity to tactile qualities might therefore play a role in picky eating.
Children who are very picky in eating frequently refuse the intake of foods. This rejection is not only based on the evaluation of taste, but also on tactile qualities of foods. It matters whether food is crispy or slimy, consistent, or with bits and pips. It is hypothesised that children who are more sensitive to touch and dislike the feel of various tactile stimuli in general, are also more dismissive of tactile stimulation in their mouth and therefore more selective in their eating. In the present study, 44 children between the ages of 4 and 10 were asked to feel different tactile stimuli with their hands and to taste different foods. Results showed a significant positive correlation between the evaluations of the two modalities, especially for the younger subjects. This suggests that tactile sensitivity might play a role in the acceptance of food. Future research could explore if training children to tolerate more tactile stimuli would also increase their appreciation of a wider variety of foods.
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GEOZS, IJS, IMTLJ, KILJ, KISLJ, NUK, OILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBJE, UL, UM, UPCLJ, UPUK
► Food reward comprises ‘liking’ and ‘wanting’ food. ► ‘Liking’ and ‘wanting’ are thought to be important in determining reward driven eating. ► Validation of measures of ‘liking’ and ‘wanting’ in ...man is logically impossible. ► It is needless to speculate on the separate contribution of ‘liking’ and ‘wanting’ to food reward.
According to the influential theory of
Berridge (1996, 2009), food reward comprises two components: food ‘liking’ and ‘wanting’, with ‘liking’ referring to the pleasure derived from eating a given food and ‘wanting’ referring to appetitive motivation. Animal research shows that these two components have separate neural correlates. In examining reward driven eating in man, researchers have thus begun to develop interest in indicators of ‘liking’ and ‘wanting’. But validating ‘liking’ and ‘wanting’ requires the dissociation of these components when theory dictates they should diverge. One such circumstance is neural sensitization as this leads to exaggerated ‘wanting’ without increased ‘liking’. However, there are no data suggesting that such sensitization is the likely result of (over)eating. Without sensitization, one cannot determine whether task performance is indicative of true food ‘liking’ or ‘wanting’. It is concluded that it is important to assess appetite and palatability in the study of reward driven eating, but determining whether these measurements reflect either food ‘wanting’ or food ‘liking’ is not.
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GEOZS, IJS, IMTLJ, KILJ, KISLJ, NUK, OILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBJE, UL, UM, UPCLJ, UPUK
Selective or picky eating can be an obstacle for a varied diet. One reason why people reject certain foods is because they do not like the texture. Several studies show that in children tactile ...sensitivity is related to pickiness in eating. Children who do not like the feel of sand or of slimy substances with their hands also reject more kinds of food, presumably because the children are more sensitive to the mouthfeel of several food textures. There is however hardly any research on the role of tactile sensitivity in adult food acceptance. Two important questions therefore are: Is tactile sensitivity related to picky eating in adults and if so, does mouthfeel mediate the relation between tactile sensitivity and pickiness? In the current study, picky eating, subjective tactile sensitivity, and evaluation of mouthfeel were measured in 87 undergraduate students. It appeared that the three measures are moderately related, with mouthfeel mediating the relation between subjective tactile sensitivity and pickiness in eating. These results show that in adults too, tactile sensitivity plays a role in the acceptance of a larger variety of foods. This means that when aiming to change or improve dietary quality of adults, acceptance of food texture should be taken into account.
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GEOZS, IJS, IMTLJ, KILJ, KISLJ, NLZOH, NUK, OILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBJE, UILJ, UL, UM, UPCLJ, UPUK, ZAGLJ, ZRSKP
ABSTRACT
Aims Previous research has shown that consistently not responding to alcohol‐related stimuli in a go/no‐go training procedure reduces drinking behaviour. This study aimed to examine further ...the mechanisms underlying this go/no‐go training effect.
Design, setting and participants Fifty‐seven heavy drinkers were assigned randomly to two training conditions: in the beer/no‐go condition, alcohol‐related stimuli were always paired with a stopping response, while in the beer/go condition participants always responded to alcohol‐related stimuli. Participants were tested individually in a laboratory at Maastricht University.
Measurements Weekly alcohol intake, implicit attitudes towards beer, approach–avoidance action tendencies towards beer and response inhibition were measured before and after the training.
Findings Results showed a significant reduction in both implicit attitudes (P = 0.03) and alcohol intake (P = 0.02) in the beer/no‐go condition, but not in the beer/go condition. There were no significant training effects on action tendencies or response inhibition.
Conclusions Repeatedly stopping pre‐potent responses towards alcohol‐related stimuli reduces excessive alcohol use via a devaluation of alcohol‐related stimuli rather than via increased inhibitory control over alcohol‐related responses.
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BFBNIB, DOBA, FSPLJ, FZAB, GIS, IJS, IZUM, KILJ, NLZOH, NUK, OILJ, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBMB, SIK, UILJ, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK, VSZLJ
In two online vignette studies, we investigated the effects of healthy lifestyle nudging and pricing interventions in two different contexts: a supermarket (Study 1) and a train station (Study 2). In ...Study 1 (N = 318) participants were randomly assigned to evaluate one of eight interventions described in a vignette and designed to either encourage healthier food choices or discourage unhealthy food choices in a supermarket setting. Two interventions comprised a small financial incentive to either encourage a healthy food choice or discourage an unhealthy food choice, but the other six interventions were nudges conceived to specifically impact agency, self-constitution or freedom of choice (three different aspects of autonomy). Relative to these nudges, the financial incentive interventions were not found to be less acceptable or more patronising. Overall, the encouragement of healthy food choices was rated as more acceptable and less patronising. The same pattern of results was found in Study 2 (N = 314). We conclude that interventions threatening specific aspects of one's autonomy do not necessarily affect its acceptance. However, the behavioural focus does affect intervention acceptance, that is, interventions focused on encouraging healthy choices are considered more acceptable than interventions that discourage the unhealthy option.
•Nudge interventions that encourage healthy choices are considered more acceptable.•Potential threats to autonomy are not necessarily linked to nudge acceptance.•Financial incentives are not considered less acceptable than nudges.•Financial incentives are not considered more patronising than nudges.
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GEOZS, IJS, IMTLJ, KILJ, KISLJ, NLZOH, NUK, OILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBJE, UILJ, UL, UM, UPCLJ, UPUK, ZAGLJ, ZRSKP
6.
Self-inflicted pain out of boredom Nederkoorn, Chantal; Vancleef, Linda; Wilkenhöner, Alexandra ...
Psychiatry research,
03/2016, Volume:
237
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Open access
Abstract Previous research has shown that in response to a monotonous, boring lab situation, non-clinical participants voluntarily self-administer electric shocks. The shocks probably served to ...disrupt the tedious monotony: they were the only available external source of stimulation. Alternatively, the shocks might have functioned to regulate the negative emotional experience caused by the induction of boredom, consistent with theories on the function of non-suicidal self-injury (NSSI). According to this latter explanation, induction of other negative emotions would also increase the administration of shocks. To test this explanation, 69 participants watched a monotonous, sad or neutral film fragment, during which they could self-administer electric shocks. Participants in the boredom condition self-administered more shocks and with higher intensity, compared to both the neutral and sadness condition. Sadness had no effect on the self-administration of shocks. The effect of boredom was more pronounced in participants with a history of NSSI: they administered more shocks in the first 15 min. The results indicate that the shocks function to disrupt monotony and not to regulate negative emotional experience in general. Moreover, boredom appears an important impetus for NSSI.
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GEOZS, IJS, IMTLJ, KILJ, KISLJ, NUK, OILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBJE, UL, UM, UPCLJ, UPUK, ZRSKP
•In two separate experiments, a boring condition is compared to a neutral condition.•Boredom promoted intake of chocolate, compared to a neutral condition (Experiment 1).•Boredom also increased ...self-administration of electric shocks (Experiment 2).•Feeling bored prompts the motivation for both rewarding and aversive stimuli.•Eating out of boredom appears mainly driven by motivation to escape monotony.
In the present study it was investigated whether boredom promotes eating and if so, whether this effect likely reflects an increased drive for rewarding stimulation (positive reinforcement) or more plainly the drive to escape boredom (negative reinforcement). In the latter case, the valence of the stimulation should not matter and people might even be willing to look for negative stimulation, for instance to hurt oneself, just to escape boredom. In two parallel experiments, it was tested whether induced boredom promotes the consumption of chocolate (Experiment 1) and whether participants likewise are more inclined to self-administer electrocutaneous stimuli (Experiment 2). In both experiments, a total of 30 participants attended two separate sessions watching a documentary for 1 h (neutral condition) and a monotonous repetition of a single clip from the same documentary for 1 h (boring condition), in balanced order. During Experiment 1, participants had free access to M&Ms and during Experiment 2 participants could freely self-administer brief electrical shocks. It was found that participants ate more M&Ms when bored but also that they more readily self-administered electrical shocks when bored. It is concluded that eating when bored is not driven by an increased desire for satisfying incentive stimulation, but mainly by the drive to escape monotony.
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GEOZS, IJS, IMTLJ, KILJ, KISLJ, NUK, OILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBJE, UL, UM, UPCLJ, UPUK
Children learn to accept novel foods by repeated exposure to these foods. In the current study, we investigated in toddlers whether a contingency management program (The Vegetable Box), comprising ...repeated vegetable taste exposure with contingent non-food rewards, is particularly potent at increasing recognition of and willingness to try vegetables. A total of 598 children (1–4 years old) recruited at 26 different day-care centres in the Netherlands took part. The day-care centres were randomly assigned to one of three conditions (‘exposure/reward’, ‘exposure/no reward’, or ‘no exposure/no reward’). At the start and directly after the 3-month intervention period, all children were asked to identify various vegetables (recognition test; max score = 14) and whether they would like to taste and consume 1 or 2 bite-size pieces of tomato, cucumber, carrot, bell pepper, radish, and cauliflower (willingness to try test). Data were analysed with linear mixed-effects regression analyses (for recognition and willingness to try separately) with condition and time as independent variables, and adjusting for day-care centre clustering. Vegetable recognition significantly increased in both the ‘exposure/reward’ and the ‘exposure/no reward’ group, relative to the ‘no exposure/no reward’ control group. The willingness to try vegetables only increased significantly in the ‘exposure/reward’ group. Offering vegetables to children at day-care centres significantly increased toddlers' ability to identify various vegetables, but rewards contingent upon tasting vegetables appear particularly effective to also increase children's willingness to try (i.e., taste and consume) different vegetables. This result corroborates and strengthens previous findings demonstrating the efficacy of similar reward-based programs.
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GEOZS, IJS, IMTLJ, KILJ, KISLJ, NUK, OILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBJE, UL, UM, UPCLJ, UPUK
Rationale
Since implicit attitudes toward alcohol play an important role in drinking behavior, a possible way to obtain a behavioral change is changing these implicit attitudes.
Objectives
This study ...examined whether a change in implicit attitudes and in drinking behavior can be achieved via evaluative conditioning.
Methods
Participants were randomly assigned to an experimental condition and a control condition. In the experimental condition, participants were subjected to an evaluative conditioning procedure that consistently pairs alcohol-related cues with negative stimuli. In the control condition, alcohol-related cues were consistently paired with neutral stimuli during the evaluative conditioning phase. Implicit attitudes, explicit attitudes, and drinking behavior were measured before and after the evaluative conditioning phase.
Results
Following the evaluative conditioning procedure, participants in the experimental condition showed stronger negative implicit attitudes toward alcohol and consumed less alcohol compared to participants in the control condition. However, this effect was only found when the evaluative conditioning task paired alcohol-related cues with general negative pictures, but not when using pictures of frowning faces.
Conclusions
These results demonstrate that evaluative conditioning can effectively change implicit attitudes toward alcohol and also suggest that this procedure can be used to change drinking behavior. Hence, evaluative conditioning may be a useful new intervention tool to combat alcohol misuse.
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DOBA, EMUNI, FIS, FSPLJ, FZAB, GEOZS, GIS, IJS, IMTLJ, IZUM, KILJ, KISLJ, MFDPS, NLZOH, NUK, OILJ, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBJE, SBMB, SBNM, UILJ, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK, VKSCE, VSZLJ, ZAGLJ
Animal agriculture has a large impact on the environment. Hence, there is an increasing demand for meat alternatives – more sustainably produced plant-based products that replace meat as meal ...component. Demands for meat alternatives also seem to be fuelled by consumers' belief that meat alternatives are healthier than meat products. In an online questionnaire study, we examined whether consumers indeed perceived meat alternatives to be healthier, to what degree consumers adequately estimated the nutritional value of meat (alternatives), and whether a nutrition claim could misguide consumers. In a panel of 120 Dutch consumers, it was found that meat alternatives were generally perceived as being healthier than meat products. According to supermarket data, meat alternatives contained less protein and saturated fat, higher levels of fibre and salt compared to meat. Consumers were found to overestimate the protein content of meat alternatives relative to meat products, especially when meat alternatives carry a ‘high in protein’ claim. The current beliefs about the healthiness and nutritional content of meat and meat alternatives are precarious and a fair, transparent, and understandable environment should be created for the conscious consumer.
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GEOZS, IJS, IMTLJ, KILJ, KISLJ, NLZOH, NUK, OILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBJE, UILJ, UL, UM, UPCLJ, UPUK, ZAGLJ, ZRSKP
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