The Effect of Attentional Bias Modification Training on Attentional Bias for High-calorie Food Cues in the Obese with Binge Eating

Abstract

The obese with binge eating has more biased attention to food than the obese without binge eating, which causes a risk of food cravings and binge eating problems. A direct treatment of the automatic attentional bias on high-calorie food cues is expected to reduce the attentional bias and binge eating. The goal of this study is to examine the effect of attentional bias modification (ABM) training, which is a method of training that disengage attentional bias for high-calorie food cues. 346 participants were divided into 25 obese female with binge eating and 25 obese female without binge eating, respectively, based on BMI, body fat percentage and binge eating scale. Each group completed self-report questionnaires, free viewing task, gap-overlap task before and after ABM training. And also, food intake was measured before and after training. The results showed that only obese without binge eating showed a significant decrease in attentional bias for high-calorie food cues after ABM training. In addition, the obese with binge eating consumed more high-calorie foods than low-calorie foods after ABM training. These results suggest that the obese with binge eating have to conduct repeated ABM training because their attentional bias and binge eating problems are more serious than the obese without binge eating.