Goal pursuit increases more after dietary success than after dietary failure: examining conflicting theories of self-regulation using ecological momentary assessment.

BACKGROUND: Maintaining a healthy body weight and reaching long-term dietary goals requires ongoing self-monitoring and behavioral adjustments. How individuals respond to successes and failures is described in models of self-regulation: while cybernetic models propose that failures lead to increased self-regulatory efforts and successes permit a reduction of such efforts, motivational models (e.g., social-cognitive theory) make opposite predictions. Here, we tested these conflicting models in an ecological momentary assessment (EMA) context and explored whether effort adjustments are related to inter-individual differences in perceived self-regulatory success in dieting (i.e., weight management). METHODS: Using linear mixed effects models, we tested in 174 diet-interested individuals whether current day dietary success or failure (e.g., on Monday) was followed by self-regulatory effort adjustment for the next day (e.g., on Tuesday) across 14 days. Success vs. failure was operationalized with two EMA items: first, whether food intake was higher vs. lower than usual and second, whether food intake was perceived as more vs. less goal-congruent than usual. Trait-level perceived self-regulatory success in dieting was measured on a questionnaire. RESULTS: Intended self-regulatory effort increased more strongly after days with dietary success (i.e., eating less than usual / rating intake as goal-congruent) than after days with dietary failure (i.e., eating more than usual / rating intake as goal-incongruent), especially in those individuals with lower scores on perceived self-regulatory success in dieting. CONCLUSIONS: Findings support mechanisms proposed by social-cognitive theory, especially in unsuccessful dieters. Thus, future dietary interventions could focus on preventing the decrease in self-regulatory effort after instances of dietary failures and thereby mitigate the potential risk that a single dietary failure initiates a downward spiral into unhealthy eating.

Why we don't eat as intended: Moderators of the short-term intention-behaviour relation in food intake.

OBJECTIVES: A healthy diet is essential for preventing chronic disease and promoting overall health. Translating one's intention to eat healthy into actual behaviour has, however, proven difficult with a range of internal and contextual factors identified as driving eating behaviour. DESIGN: We leverage Temporal Self-Regulation Theory to examine these momentary determinants' direct and moderating effects on the intention-behaviour relation with Ecological Momentary Assessment (EMA). METHODS: Eighty-seven healthy participants (mage = 24.1 years; 59 women, 28 men) reported, 5 times daily for 10 weekdays, their intentions to stick to a self-set dietary restriction goal for the next 3 hr, the goal congruency of their eating behaviour in the past 3 hr, and a range of factors potentially influencing food intake, such as stress, emotions and environmental eating cues. RESULTS: Two-part multilevel modelling revealed that craving, availability of goal-incongruent foods, social eating cues, giving in to other temptations and weaker momentary intentions directly increased the risk and severity of goal-incongruent intake within the next 3 hr. Social cues, stress and craving further influence behaviour through altering intention implementation. CONCLUSIONS: Results imply that people regularly fail to implement intentions for 3-hr periods and that a range of factors influences this, both directly and by disrupting intentional processes. While for some barriers, fostering strong intentions throughout the day could be beneficial, others require different strategies for dietary adherence.

Excess after stress-A three-study validation of the salzburg stress drinking scale as a new tool to measure the stress-drinking relationship.

Stress frequently influences a person's propensity to drink alcohol. Inter-individual differences in such stress-related drinking can be assessed through psychometric scales; however, available questionnaires conflate stress- with emotion-related reasons to drink and ignore evidence of decreased alcohol consumption in response to stress. Therefore, we developed a genuine stress-drinking scale (Salzburg Stress Drinking Scale; SSDS), adapted from the Salzburg Stress Eating Scale, and assessed its psychometric properties. In study 1 (n = 639), the SSDS was found to have a one-factor structure, excellent internal consistency, and acceptable test-retest reliability. SSDS scores were significantly correlated with other measures assessing emotional drinking, but uncorrelated with general alcohol pathology and other health-relevant consummatory behaviors such as stress-related eating or nicotine consumption. In addition, no significant sex differences arose. In study 2 (n = 42) patients with an alcohol use disorder or addiction scored significantly higher on the SSDS compared to healthy controls. In an Ecological Momentary Assessment study 3 (n = 67), the SSDS showed partial ecological validity through significant relationships with daily alcohol consumption, but not daily stress-drinking relationships. In sum, the SSDS represents a psychometrically sound tool for the measurement of stress-related drinking and complements a battery of stress-related changes in health-relevant behaviors.

Imagine chocolate: The craving experience questionnaire in the food domain.

Measurement of food craving has gained relevance in the current obesity epidemic. The Craving Experience Questionnaire (CEQ) considers not only craving intensity but also cognitive intrusiveness and imagery vividness as separate craving factors and could thus refine food craving assessment. It is available in two versions with ten items each. The CEQ-F assesses craving frequency across specific time periods and the CEQ-S time-point specific craving strength. Across three independent studies, N = 533 participants completed the German chocolate CEQ-F referenced at the past year to operationalise trait-like craving. Among them, N = 402 also completed the German chocolate CEQ-S referenced at the current moment to operationalise state-like craving. Four-week test-retest reliability was measured. For external validity, we assessed self-reported chocolate consumption, body-mass-index, trait approach motivation, general imagery vividness, and the most widely used food craving questionnaire, namely the Food Cravings Questionnaires in a trait (FCQ-T-r) and state version (FCQ-S), as well as behavioural approach bias (reaction time-based measurement). The three-factor structure was replicated with excellent internal consistency for both CEQ-F and CEQ-S. Test-retest reliability was moderate for both CEQ versions. CEQ-F scores were related to higher levels of chocolate consumption, approach motivation, and FCQ-T-r scores, but not to body-mass-index, imagery vividness, or approach bias. CEQ-S scores were associated with FCQ-S scores and partly with approach bias, but not with approach motivation and imagery vividness. The current results support the factor structure, validity and reliability of the German chocolate CEQ-S and CEQ-F with questions remaining regarding the ability of the CEQ-S to measure state craving. Thus, CEQ-F and CEQ-S usefully contribute to food craving assessment.

Testing the effectiveness of a mobile approach avoidance intervention and measuring approach biases in an ecological momentary assessment context: study protocol for a randomised-controlled trial.

INTRODUCTION: Unhealthy eating behaviour is a major contributor to obesity and related diseases and is associated with a behavioural bias to approach rather than avoid desired foods, as measured with reaction time tasks. Approach-avoidance interventions (AAIs) have been proposed as a way to modify food evaluations and help people to eat in accordance with their dietary goals. Mobile implementations of AAI might be easily accessible, low threshold interventions, but their effectiveness has not been established yet. METHODS AND ANALYSIS: Participants who aim to change their eating behaviour are randomised to intervention or control groups. They complete six sessions of a smartphone-based AAI, in which they push (ie, avoid) or pull (ie, approach) personalised food images. Intervention group participants always avoid foods that they personally want to eat less often and approach foods that they personally want to eat more often. In the control group, images are paired equally often with both response directions. To evaluate contextual and dynamic intervention effects, ecological momentary assessment (EMA) is measured throughout, with questions about food intake, hunger, stress, emotions, eating intentions, food craving and impulsivity twice a day. Additional EMA preintervention and postintervention measures are administered before and after the intervention phase (4 days each) with a 1-day follow-up EMA 4 weeks after the intervention. Multilevel models will examine the temporal covariance between approach bias and self-reported variables as well as short-term and long-term intervention effects on approach bias, food intake and craving. ETHICS AND DISSEMINATION: The study was approved by the Ethics Committee of the University of Salzburg. Results will be published in peer-reviewed scientific journals and presented at scientific conferences. TRIAL REGISTRATION NUMBER: German Clinical Trials Register DRKS, registration number DRKS00030780.

How pre-processing decisions affect the reliability and validity of the approach-avoidance task: Evidence from simulations and multiverse analyses with six datasets.

Reaction time (RT) data are often pre-processed before analysis by rejecting outliers and errors and aggregating the data. In stimulus-response compatibility paradigms such as the approach-avoidance task (AAT), researchers often decide how to pre-process the data without an empirical basis, leading to the use of methods that may harm data quality. To provide this empirical basis, we investigated how different pre-processing methods affect the reliability and validity of the AAT. Our literature review revealed 108 unique pre-processing pipelines among 163 examined studies. Using empirical datasets, we found that validity and reliability were negatively affected by retaining error trials, by replacing error RTs with the mean RT plus a penalty, and by retaining outliers. In the relevant-feature AAT, bias scores were more reliable and valid if computed with D-scores; medians were less reliable and more unpredictable, while means were also less valid. Simulations revealed bias scores were likely to be less accurate if computed by contrasting a single aggregate of all compatible conditions with that of all incompatible conditions, rather than by contrasting separate averages per condition. We also found that multilevel model random effects were less reliable, valid, and stable, arguing against their use as bias scores. We call upon the field to drop these suboptimal practices to improve the psychometric properties of the AAT. We also call for similar investigations in related RT-based bias measures such as the implicit association task, as their commonly accepted pre-processing practices involve many of the aforementioned discouraged methods. HIGHLIGHTS: • Rejecting RTs deviating more than 2 or 3 SD from the mean gives more reliable and valid results than other outlier rejection methods in empirical data • Removing error trials gives more reliable and valid results than retaining them or replacing them with the block mean and an added penalty • Double-difference scores are more reliable than compatibility scores under most circumstances • More reliable and valid results are obtained both in simulated and real data by using double-difference D-scores, which are obtained by dividing a participant's double mean difference score by the SD of their RTs.

Touchscreen-based approach-avoidance responses to appetitive and threatening stimuli.

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES: Individuals are thought to be biased towards approaching positive stimuli and avoiding negative stimuli. Yet, it is unclear whether this general pattern applies to all stimulus classes or whether biases are more specific. We expected significant approach biases towards two types of positive stimuli, appetitive foods and butterflies; and avoidance biases away from two types of negative stimuli, spoiled foods and spiders. METHODS: A touchscreen-based Approach-Avoidance Task (AAT), using hand gestures toward or away from stimuli assessed biases. Questionnaires and image ratings assessed individual differences in stimulus evaluations. RESULTS: Approach biases for butterflies and appetitive foods were found, the latter being strongest towards individually liked foods. There was no avoidance bias for spoiled foods. An avoidance bias for spiders was found in individuals with elevated spider fear. LIMITATIONS: Incomplete counterbalancing precluded direct comparison between both positive and negative stimuli. CONCLUSIONS: Behavioural biases in the touchscreen AAT generally co-vary with individuals' affective evaluation of the stimuli. Approach biases were elicited by positive stimuli independently of whether they were regularly (foods) or rarely (butterflies) approached in everyday life. This may hint towards a tendency to approach positive stimuli regardless of the specific category, whereas avoidance biases may be more stimulus specific.

Touchscreen-based assessment of food approach biases: Investigating reliability and item-specific preferences.

Strong cravings for unhealthy foods and implicit tendencies to approach them threaten the physical and mental health of vulnerable populations. Yet, implicit measures of food approach tendencies have methodological limitations, as existing approach-avoidance tasks (AAT) are often unreliable and require specialized hardware. We propose a novel method to measure approach biases: on a touchscreen, participants slide their hand either toward a food item (and away from control images) or away from it (and toward control images) in separate blocks. Adequate attention to the stimuli is ensured by the coupling of stimulus category to the required response. We found that this touchscreen-variant of the AAT yielded reliable bias scores when approach and avoidance were defined as movements relative to the stimulus rather than to the body. Compared to control images, we found an approach bias for low-calorie foods but not for high-calorie foods. This bias additionally varied on a food-by-food basis depending on the participant's desire to eat individual food items. Correlations with state and trait cravings were inconclusive. Future research needs to address the order effects that were found, in which participants avoiding foods in the first block showed larger biases than participants approaching food in the first block, likely due to insufficient opportunity to practice the task. Our findings highlight the need for approach bias retraining paradigms to use personalized stimulus sets. The task can enrich the methodological repertoire of research on eating disorders, obesity and cognitive bias modification.

Improving the touchscreen-based food approach-avoidance task: remediated block-order effects and initial findings regarding validity.

Approach biases to foods may explain why food consumption often diverges from deliberate dietary intentions. Yet, the assessment of behavioural biases with the approach-avoidance tasks (AAT) is often unreliable and validity is partially unclear. The present study continues a series of studies that develop a task based on naturalistic approach and avoidance movements on a touchscreen (hand-AAT). In the hand-AAT, participants are instructed to respond based on the food/non-food distinction, thereby ensuring attention to the stimuli. Yet, this implies the use of instruction switches (i.e., 'approach food - avoid objects' to 'avoid food - approach objects'), which introduce order effects. The present study increased the number of instruction switches to potentially minimize order effects, and re-examined reliability. We additionally included the implicit association task (IAT) and several self-reported eating behaviours to investigate the task's validity. Results replicated the presence of reliable approach biases to foods irrespective of instruction order. Evidence for validity, however, was mixed: biases correlated positively with external eating, increase in food craving and aggregated image valence ratings but not with desire to eat ratings of the individual images considered within participants or the IAT. We conclude that the hand-AAT can reliably assess approach biases to foods that are relevant to self-reported eating patterns.