The Modulation Of Attention To Food Cues Via Working Memory

Attentional biases towards food cues may be linked to the developme nt of obesity. Different individual may be have different attentional bia s towards food cues and there may be have different components of attent ional bias towards food cues among restrained eaters. Therefore, the first study aimed to investigate attentional bias among individuals and compo nents of attentional bias towards food cues among restrained eaters. Atte ntional bias was assessed by a visual probe task, through 3 (probe locati on:consistent, neutral, inconsistent) x 3 (type of subjects:failure re strained eaters, successful restrained eaters, unrestrained eaters) of mi xed experimental design. We found that, restrained eaters show biased atte ntion towards food cues, embodied that suecessful restrained eaters showe d attendency to avoid food cues, however, unsueeessful restrained eaters h ave difficulity in disengaging from food cues, and we have failed to det ect significant attentional bias towardsfood cues in unrestrained eater s.The second aim of our study was to explore the cognitive mechanism o f a-ttentional bias towards food cues among restrained eaters. Thus, we c hoose unrestrained eaters as the participants and designed a 2 (task typ es:memory task, priming task) x 3 (probe location:consistent, neutral, inconsistent) of mixed experimental design. We found that facing these f ood cues, restrained eaters can be biased towards attending to food cues by manipulating information held in working memory, which proved that th e working memory have influence in attention bias toward food cues. When food cues was held in working memory, attention was robustly drawn autom atically towards these related items.However, the first study proved that there are different attentional bias toward food cues among different restrained eaters, and suecessful restrained eaters can control strategically attentional bias toward foo d cues when facing these food cues. Therefore, our third aim was to compar e the effect of long-term working memory and short-term working memory t o attentional bias by a2 (clue type:food and non-food) x 2 (interferen ce types:long-term memory interference、short-term memory interference、n eutral interference) within the subjects of experimental design. We found that attention was robustly drawn automatically towardsthese items hold ing in the short-term working memory, even if these contentsappeared in t he attention task in the way of interference items. Hoever, Individuals wi 11 take attention away from interfering items consistent with long-term working memory, and facilated the efficiency of biasing attention.Overall, there is individual variation in attentional bias towards fo od cues, and there is not significant attentional bias towards food cues in unrestrained eaters, suecessful restrained eaters showed atendency to avoid food cues, however, unsueeessful restrained eaters showed slower di sengagement from food cues;Facing these food cues, short-term working mem ory can promote the unsuecessful restrained eaters pay attention to thes e food cues automatically, and long-term working memory can promote the s uecessful restrained eaters pay attention to these food cues more strate gically.