Attentional and approach biases for pictorial food cues. Influence of external eating

Individual differences in sensitivity of neural reward systems to external appetitive cues may determine normal and pathological eating behaviour. In the current study we investigated the relationship between cognitive biases for food cues and the trait predisposition of external eating (eating in response to external food cues). Biases in attention, approach and subjective evaluation of food cues were assessed on pictorial visual probe, stimulus response compatibility (SRC) and pleasantness rating tasks, respectively, in a sample of non-clinical participants. High-external eating was associated with a greater attentional bias for food cues, as well as with a bias to evaluate them more positively. The relationship between external eating and the approach bias for food cues was less clear (i.e., high-external eating was not significantly associated with greater approach bias after controlling the effect of emotional eating). Results support the view that there is individual variation in trait sensitivity of the reward system to external food cues. Implications for models of cognitive mechanisms that underlie normal and pathological motivational states are discussed.