No Evidence for a Food-Related Attention Bias after Thought Suppression

Authors: Soetens, Barbara; Braet, Caroline; Bosmans, Guy

Source: Psychologica Belgica, Volume 48, Number 1, 2008 , pp. 37-61(25)

Publisher: Academia Press

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Abstract:

The aim of this study was to investigate whether food-related thought suppression results in an attention bias for food cues. Fifty-nine female students took part in the experiment. All completed a modified exogenous cueing task containing pictures of foods and toys with a similar valence (presentation duration: 250 ms and 1050 ms). Half of the participants were instructed to suppress thoughts about food and the other half was given control instructions, prior to completing the exogenous cueing task. No evidence was found for an enhanced cue validity effect for food cues after food-related thought suppression. Hence, the preliminary results do not provide support for the hypothesis that thought suppression is sufficient to yield an attention bias. Since the study was the first to employ an exogenous cueing task to study the attentional processing of food cues, replication is warranted.

Document Type: Research article

Publication date: 2008-01-01

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Psychologica Belgica is the flagship journal of the Belgian Association for Psychological Science. It appears quarterly and publishes peer-reviewed scientific contributions to all domains of psychology as well as book reviews. Contributions take the form of full-length articles or short reports. Psychologica Belgica is listed in all major indexes, including Current Contents and Psychological Abstracts.
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