Food Approach Avoidance Task

Kahveci, Sercan; Alebeek, Hannah van; Berking, Matthias; Blechert, Jens

doi:10.1037/t80558-000

Cited by 3 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 0 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…Bootstrapped split-half reliability coefficients were computed using the AATtools package ( Kahveci, 2020 ) for R ( R Core Team, 2019 ). The sample was split randomly, outliers were excluded, and bias scores were computed in accordance with the Methods section, and scores from both halves were correlated.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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

Alebeek¹,

Kahveci²,

Blechert³

2021

Open Res Europe

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

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.

show abstract

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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

Alebeek¹,

Kahveci²,

Blechert³

2021

Open Res Europe

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Large positive scores indicate an increased tendency to approach rather than avoid angry/fearful faces relative to neutral faces, whereas large negative scores indicate a tendency to avoid rather than approach angry/fearful faces relative to neutral faces. To estimate the reliability of the obtained scores, we calculated Spearman-Brown corrected means of 6000 random split-half correlations, using the AAT Tools R-package (Kahveci, 2020). This procedure yielded the following reliability estimates and 95% confidence intervals: AAT angry faces: To answer our main research questions, we tested two separate path models, predicting reactive and proactive aggression from either the AAT-based or the SRCT-based approach/avoidance tendency D-scores for angry and fearful faces.…”

Section: Scoring Data Cleaning and Statistical Approachmentioning

confidence: 99%

Approach‐avoidance tendencies in proactive and reactive aggression

Van Bockstaele

2024

Aggressive Behavior

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Aggressive behaviors have been related to approach/avoidance tendencies. In our current study, we investigated whether approach/avoidance tendencies for angry versus fearful emotional expressions were differentially predictive of children's reactive and proactive aggression. A total of 116 children (58 girls, Mage = 10.90, standard deviation SDage = 0.98) completed an approach/avoidance task (AAT) and a stimulus‐response compatibility task (SRCT), both measuring the extent to which they tended to approach or avoid angry and fearful facial expressions relative to neutral facial expressions. Children also completed a self‐report scale of reactive and proactive aggression. Although none of the approach/avoidance tendency scores correlated significantly with either of the aggression scores, stronger approach tendencies for angry faces and stronger avoidance tendencies for fearful faces in the AAT predicted more reactive aggression. Similar yet nonsignificant results were found for proactive aggression, but no effects were replicated in the SRCT. Our results thus invite the conclusion that reactive aggression is characterized by a tendency to approach angry faces and a tendency to avoid fearful faces. However, the poor discrimination between both types of aggression as well as the lack of convergence between the results of our two measures of approach/avoidance tendencies indicates that further research is needed to establish the role of approach/avoidance tendencies for emotional faces as markers for childhood aggression.

show abstract

“…Cacioppo et al (1993), moreover, argued that: "subjects who have undergone food deprivation and who are exposed to edible ideographs […] may show stronger [approach tendencies] than un-deprived subjects" (see also Strack & Deutsch, 2004. Another indication of dynamic approach tendencies is that the approach-avoidance tasks (AATs) test-retest reliability is generally reported to be low, whereas its split-half reliability is generally reported to be high (Kahveci et al, 2021;Machulska et al, 2022;Zech et al, 2022)-a pattern that indicates that a measure likely detects state changes (Hedge et al, 2018). If approach tendencies indeed fluctuate, overconsumption may be associated with a dysregulation of need-based fluctuations of approach tendencies rather than chronically elevated approach tendencies.…”

Section: Dynamic Food Approach Tendenciesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…To test this hypothesis, we asked participants to report their subjective hunger and time since their last meal. In addition to testing these main hypotheses, we explored the associations between food approach tendencies and food attractiveness as well as caloric density (the desire to eat a certain food, a variable potentially related to food attractiveness, has previously been shown to influence food approach tendencies; Kahveci et al, 2020Kahveci et al, , 2021. To examine these associations, we varied the attractiveness and caloric density of the food stimuli used in the AAT.…”

Section: Dynamic Food Approach Tendenciesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Food approach dynamics in daily life: Speed and force of food approach movements fluctuate with hunger, but less so for people with high BMI.

Zech¹,

Dijk²,

Dillen³

2023

Journal of Experimental Psychology: General

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Researchers have suggested that the overconsumption of food, alcohol, and drugs could be explained by chronically elevated approach tendencies to rewarding but unhealthy stimuli. Here, we use the example of food to show that dysregulated rather than chronically elevated approach tendencies are associated with adverse health outcomes. To this end, we developed a new smartphone-based paradigm to measure dynamic changes in food approach tendencies outside the laboratory (piloted with n = 48). We demonstrated in three preregistered experiments (total N = 367) that food approach tendencies decrease from before to after people have eaten. We further show that in overweight and obese participants, these dynamics are disrupted as their food approach tendencies increase rather than decrease after meals. In addition to showing these effects based on traditional reaction time-based food approach tendencies, we also demonstrate these patterns in a novel measure of response force-a measure that has long been used to study motivation in animals but has received little attention in humans. Together, our findings suggest that both reaction time-based and force-based approach tendencies change dynamically in accordance with people's need states and that disruptions in these dynamics are associated with adverse health outcomes, such as overweight and obesity.

show abstract

Food Approach Avoidance Task

Cited by 3 publications

References 0 publications

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

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

Approach‐avoidance tendencies in proactive and reactive aggression

Food approach dynamics in daily life: Speed and force of food approach movements fluctuate with hunger, but less so for people with high BMI.

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About