Implicit food odour priming effects on reactivity and inhibitory control towards foods

PLoS One. 2020 Jun 9;15(6):e0228830. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0228830. eCollection 2020.

Abstract

The food environment can interact with cognitive processing and influence eating behaviour. Our objective was to characterize the impact of implicit olfactory priming on inhibitory control towards food, in groups with different weight status. Ninety-one adults completed a modified Affective Shifting Task: they had to detect target stimuli and ignore distractor stimuli while being primed with non-attentively perceived odours. We measured reactivity and inhibitory control towards food pictures. Priming effects were observed on reactivity: participants with overweight and obesity were slower when primed with pear and pound cake odour respectively. Common inhibitory control patterns toward foods were observed between groups. We suggest that non-attentively perceived food cues influence bottom-up processing by activating distinguished mental representations according to weight status. Also, our data show that cognitive load influences inhibitory control toward foods. Those results contribute to understanding how the environment can influence eating behaviour in individuals with obesity.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Adult
  • Cues*
  • Feeding Behavior / drug effects
  • Feeding Behavior / psychology
  • Female
  • Food*
  • Humans
  • Inhibition, Psychological*
  • Male
  • Middle Aged
  • Odorants*
  • Reaction Time / drug effects
  • Young Adult

Grants and funding

The work in this article was supported by grants from the French National Research Agency [Agence Nationale de la Recherche (ANR): ImplicEAT project ANR-17-CE21-0001], awarded to SC. https://anr.fr/Project-ANR-17-CE21-0001 The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.