Time-course analysis of food cue processing: An eye-tracking investigation on context effects

Background: Previous eye-tracking research has demonstrated that high-calorie food cues capture visual attention, particularly in individuals with overweight and weight concerns. The present experiment investigated whether this attentional bias can be influenced by context variables (i.e., the presence of pleasant low-calorie cues), and changes over time. This was studied via time-course analysis. Method: Ninety women (mean age = 25 years) were presented with 60 picture pairs (a 6 s) that either showed a combination of high-calorie food + low-calorie food, high-calorie food + non-food, or low-calorie food + non-food. The women were assigned to one of three groups (n = 30): overweight with weight concerns (OW + ), normal-weight with weight concerns (NW+ ), normal weight without weight concerns (NW-). The relative number of fixations on (high-calorie) food cues was examined across the course of the picture pair presentations for one-second intervals. Results: High-calorie food was fixated more often than low-calorie food and non-food only during the first second of the picture pair presentation. Subsequently, all participants (independent of the group assignment) showed the tendency to gaze on low-calorie cues when these cues were combined with high-calorie cues. Conclusion: This study revealed timing-related context effects on visual food cue reactivity. While the early attentional bias to high-calorie cues could not be changed by context, this was possible during the later processing stage. Future studies need to examine whether the observed context effect can influence food choices and eating behavior.