THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN HUNGER AND ATTENTIONAL BIAS FOR FOOD CUES

INTRODUCTION

The food cues are responsible for influencing the choices of eating food products involving hunger, smell or sight of food. It includes various aspects such as observing other people eating delicious food or talking about famous restaurant of tasty eatable items. However, the relationship between hunger and attentional biased food cues includes the preferences of individuals to their favourite food (Schmidt and et. al., 2016). In addition to this, youngsters are mostly not bale to control their urge of hunger while passing nearby the famous restaurant of specific dish. It is observed that people feel hunger when someone is eating in front of them and looking at poster of delicious food centres. Attention bias can be described as a tendency of perception of an individual which get affected by their recurring thoughts at a time. The Berridge’s model of food reward consist the motivational wanting or linking of an individual in regards to food rewards. Attention of a person remain bias towards specific eatable products which may develop hunger.

The major objective of this study is to explain the link between hunger and food cues that has a major impact on health of an individual. Food cues can often results in number of diseases such as obesity and people often ended with consuming high calorie food. Thus, it is very important to understand about actual hunger which is occurring and a feeling of hunger after smelling or imaging about some particular food items (External cues challenging the internal appetite control system—Overview and practical implications, 2020). This study is specifically focusing on the relationship between these two aspects and it is different from the other studies because most of the studies generally avoid this criteria and put emphasis on other factors. An exposure to food cues can motivate an individual to eat. Hunger has a direct impact on prominence of food cues. It activates different regions in the brain and enhance them.

The study will be helpful in develop an understanding about actual link between food cues and hunger. Improper regulation of food plays a crucial role in occurrence of obesity and overweight. It may have a major impact on control system of internal appetite and external environment cues. Food cues may potentially hamper internal signals of an individual and will influence food intake.

It is hypothesised that there is a positive correlation between the hunger and attentional bias for food cues in Youth, due to loss of control eating.

METHOD

For making the study successful various research methodologies have been utilised, such methods are discussed below.

Design - Quantitative method type of research investigation have been used in this research which involves in accumulation of such data which are in digits and can be regarded as quantifiable information through which the statistic and logical conclusion can be drawn. Such type of investigation requires sampling form various participants either via direct questioning or by rendering online surveys and questionnaires and polling, each and every results must be analysed in the form of the digits and numbers (Deluchi and et. al., 2017). Survey research is the most integrated tool of the quantitative method which can be used validly. The survey process involves in the sampling of a entertain umber of respondents through which several types of questions are being asked.

Participants - The sampling is a kind of statistical process which majorly focus on the selection of the a person's observation, such procedure assist in forming statistical interpretation about the certain amount of the population. The process requires in selecting a required amount of the samples from the large population, such population must have the ability yo be the representative of the items and the properties which are used in the research (Kemps, Tiggemann and Hollitt, 2016). Random sampling is utilised in this study where every person has the equal chance of getting select in the sample. The number of participants which are 135, out of which 81 are females, 53 are males and 1 non binary.

Materials - Standard deviation is such mathematical calculation that has been used in this study for drawing the results and making the study more accurate. The standard deviation has referred to as a measure of variables, low values indicate such results which are close to the mean while high standard deviation value shows such set which are distributed over broad range.

Procedure - Stroop task is one of the best known psychological experiment which have been used in this study. Such method clearly defines the ability of a person to suppress the the cognitive hindrance which takes place when the particular stimulus obstructs the processing of the second stimulus (Becker and et. al. 2016). The reaction time which is required in the processing of such stimulus gets delayed due to the mismatch of the stimulus. This neuropsychological test is entirely accepted in various process of investigation over a certain objective and are also adopted in several clinical practices.

RESULTS

Hypothesis – It is hypothesised that there is a positive correlation between the hunger and attentional bias for food cues in Youth, due to loss of control eating.

Emerging data from this report indicates that youth having binge eating habits exhibit the attentional bias for highly palatable and junk foods. This would result in feeling hunger for food among them whether their body requires or not, which lead to promote obesogenic eating patterns among them, with excess weight gain. Taking a study in this regard, on 135 participants where youths are ranged from 15 to 25 years, with a mean of 24.22 years near about and SD = 8.03. The majority of chosen participants under this study were female 81 out of 135 and the sample spanned with three variables that are hunger, Low Caloric RT and High Caloric RT. It has been interpreted that frequency of data for high caloric attention bias is positively correlated with hunger cues, r(135) = .17 and p = .04. Here, after adjusting the relationship between eating frequency and hunger bias for body mass index was attenuated as r(135) = .04, p= .21. Therefore, BMI did not significantly correlate with attention bias for low caloric variable [r(135) = .04, p = .21], high caloric bias [r(135) = .17 and p = .04].

DISCUSSION

It has been evaluated by considering the result, and it has been identified that the hypothesis chosen for this study is accepted. Due to loss of control and eating habits, a positive correlation is found among youth with hunger and attention bias on hunger cues. However, the study, which is often discussed in assignment help scenarios, primarily focuses on females who have less control over their eating habits. When extrapolating these results to the entire youth population, it has been analyzed that this leads to an increase in obesity issues among them. For higher calorific food, it has been found that there is no attentional bias among youth; they simply eat such foods to satisfy their hunger. This primary study examined the automatic orientation and reallocation to food cues, which states that during an attention task, youth are majorly concerned with high calorific and low calorific food cues (Zhang and et. al., 2018). But when they feel uncontrollable hunger, they don’t concern themselves with whether the food they intake is low or high calorific.

Therefore, there is a positive correlation between hunger and attention bias on hunger cues when participants are given time to react. In contrast, when no time is given to react to food cues for eradicating hunger, there is a negative correlation between hunger and attention bias to hunger cues (Bazzaz, Fadardi, and Parkinson, 2017). To judge the hunger reaction of participants, they were fasted for more than 4 to 6 hours before the study. This study shows that female participants are mostly concerned with food cues to eradicate their hunger when food is offered to them after fasting, while male participants didn’t show the same concern. This study creates a biased result, where one result shows a positive correlation between hunger and attention bias, while another shows a contrasting result. When summarizing findings like these, a paraphrasing tool can be useful to ensure clarity and accuracy.

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