The Effect Of Working Memory Capacity Training On Children's Attention Bias For Food Cues

The attention bias for food cues is composed of facilitated attention and difficulty in attention disengagement,which can trigger an unconscious and impulsive overeating behavior,even lead to food addiction and obesity.One of the reasons cause children to appear the attention bias for food cues is the abilities of children's attention distribution and attention inhibition are so weak that they can't effectively resist and transfer the attention out of food cues.Inhibition control training is currently the main intervention to attention bias for food cues,but the inhibition control training has a material limitation,working memory capacity training can overcome this limitation.Executive attention theory of working memory purposed that working memory capacity is closely related to attention control ability such as attention distribution and attention inhibition.While the development of working memory capacity is through the working memory capacity training,the ability of attention control will also improve and has no task or material constraints.Therefore,improve the attention control ability of children through the working memory capacity training could be a new intervention to modify the attention bias for food cues.Our research screened the children with attention bias for food cues to investigate the effect of working memory capacity training on modifying the attention bias for food cues.The research consists of two experiments.In Experiment 1,we made use of dotprobe task to screen the 232 children aged 5-7 years,and finally screened 60 children with attention bias for food cues,and then measure the attention inhibition ability and working memory capacity of 60 children by Flanker task and working memory capacity task.60 children were equally divided into training group and control group according to the dot-probe effect value,Flanker effect value and working memory capacity.In Experiment 2,we used the Lumosity program to improve working memory capacity of 30 children in the training group.After the working memory capacity training,we tested dot-probe task,Flanker task and working memory capacity task again on 30 children of the training group and 30 children of the control group to explore the influence of the working memory capacity training on children's attention distribution and attention inhibition ability to food cues.The findings and conclusions were as follows:(1)The working memory capacity of children aged 5-7 can be improved through training.(2)The children in the training group had better performance in the post dot-probe task than the children in the control group.The result suggested that the development of working memory capacity can improve the ability of attention distribution to food cues.(3)The children in the training group had better performance in the post Flanker task than the children in the control group.The result suggested that the development of working memory capacity can improve the ability of attention inhibition to food cues.(4)The children in the training group improved the ability of attention disengagement for food cues.The result suggested that working memory capacity training can modify the attention bias for food cues to some extent.In conclusion,our research found that children's ability of attention distribution and attention inhibition can be improved by working memory capacity training,and the improvement of the ability modified the children's attention bias for food cues.