Effects of temptations on the affective salience of weight control goals

Despite the value of weight control goals, the maintenance of healthy eating habits represents a challenge for most. Self-regulatory efforts are often challenged by the presence of high-risk cues (e.g., tempting foods) which provide short-term positive outcomes at the expense of these long-term health objectives. The current study examined contextual influences on self-regulation failure by exploring the effect of cues on an indirect measure of goal value. Two experiments were conducted with undergraduate students which examined the effect of temptation cues on the evaluation of information related to the goal of weight control. Results of Study 1 provided preliminary evidence for the utility of this task as an indirect measure of goal value and showed that food-related primes slowed evaluation response times for weight control-related targets. Study 2 replicated and extended these findings by demonstrating that temptation cues may not only decrease the affective salience of weight control related information but increase the salience of information related to the goal of affect enhancement. These results suggest that self-regulation failure may be influenced by contextual changes in the value of health-related goals. Implications for prevention and intervention efforts are discussed.     

Effects of body weight on discriminative-stimulus control by phencyclidine in the pigeon.

Using a color-tracking procedure with responses reinforced under a second-order schedule, the discriminative-stimulus properties of phencyclidine were studied in pigeons maintained at 70%, 80%, or 90% of their free-feeding weights. The generalization curves for phencyclidine were similar at all three body weights. Generalization curves for pentobarbital, d-amphetamine, and saline were also unrelated to body weight. These data suggest that food deprivation may not influence the discriminative-stimulus properties of drugs in the way that it influences the reinforcing-stimulus properties of drugs. The reason may be that during discrimination training interoceptive stimuli resulting from food deprivation do not become conditioned to the stimulus properties of the drug, because the food-deprivation stimuli are paired equally often with the presence and absence of drug stimuli.     

Effects of weight cycling on metabolic control in male outpatients with non-insulin-dependent diabetes mellitus

Examined the effects of weight cycling (i.e., losing and regaining or gaining and relosing body weight) versus weight maintenance on metabolic control in 327 adult, male, outpatient veterans with non-insulin-dependent diabetes mellitus (NIDDM) who were followed over an average of 3.4 years. When compared with weight maintenance, weight cycling, whether defined as a categorical or as a continuous variable, was not found to be associated with deficits in metabolic control or increased need for hypoglycemic medication. Patients who weight cycled had fasting serum glucose and hemoglobin A1c levels comparable to those who remained within 10% of their initial body weights, and these levels of metabolic control were obtained with similar classes and dosages of hypoglycemic medication.     

The role of teachers' perceived control and children's characteristics in interactions between 6-year-olds and their teachers

The study aimed at an understanding of child-teacher interactions in school preparatory classrooms. Relations between observed interactions and sex of the child, teachers' ratings of their perceived control, and of children's undercontrolled and overcontrolled problem behaviors, social competence and work efficiency were studied. Thirty-six teachers and 92 six-year-olds, 39 girls and 53 boys, from 19 classrooms were directly observed on 2-5 occasions during a total mean of 60 minutes per child. The results showed that interactions involving teacher support behaviors were the most common, but comparatively less well explained by the predictors. Associations were found between perceived control and two types of teacher command interactions. For teacher commands initiated by child externalizing behavior, the relation with perceived control was shown to hold for boys only. Male sex and rated undercontrolled problems were predictive of more interactions initiated with externalizing behaviors and also of more restrictive teacher responses following child positive behaviors. Overcontrolled children, who had teachers high in perceived control, were more often met with support behavior when they were off-task. It was concluded that teacher perceptions of control and of child behaviors as well as sex of the child contribute to ongoing processes in preschool classrooms and that the chosen methodology could be used to further the search for factors affecting interactions in preschool settings.     

The role of body weight in resident-intruder aggression

The behavior of male NIH Swiss mice of various body weights in the resident-intruder test of aggression was investigated. Mice were housed individually for 10 days prior to the test, and allocated to six groups. In the first three groups body weights of residents and group-housed intruders were matched, and the animals were divided into light, average, or heavy groups. In the last three groups weights of the intruder mice were either matched with the residents, or intruders were lighter or heavier than the residents. We found that light residents spent significantly less time in aggressive behaviors and longer time in defensive behaviors than the other two groups. The heavy mice showed most social investigation. The body weights of intruders were also shown to affect the behavior in the test: those residents which had light opponents spent a longer time in aggressive behavior than those which had matched or heavy opponents. The resident mice with heavy opponents showed most defensive behaviors. To study whether pharmacological manipulation may have different effects on behavior in the resident-intruder test in mice having different weights, animals of light, average, and heavy body weight received a low dose (0.8 g/kg) of ethanol 30 min prior to the test. We did not note any effect of ethanol on aggressive behavior in the three groups. The results suggest that body weight plays a significant role in determining the level of aggression and defensive behaviors in the resident-intruder test.     

Self-directed weight control through eating and exercise

A weight control program using a written contract and other self-control behavior modification techniques for changing eating habits was compared with a similar program concentrating on both eating and exercise behavior and with an attention-placebo control condition. Participants in all three programs lost weight during the 12 week program, with no significant differences between groups. A seven-month follow-up revealed that Ss in the two behavior modification groups lost more than those in the control group and that those in the eating plus exercise group lost more than those in the group dealing only with eating behavior.     

The role of psychological control,socioeconomic status and academic achievement in parents' educational aspirations for their adolescent children

The present study examined the associations between mothers' and fathers' psychological control, socioeconomic status (SES) and their role in parents' educational aspirations for their adolescent children. Moreover, we examined to what extent SES and psychological control predicted their child's grade point average (GPA) and educational aspirations. A total of 1,034 Finnish adolescents aged 15 to 16 and their parents (720 mothers, 542 fathers) were surveyed at the beginning of the last grade of compulsory school. The results showed that the use of psychological control was more common among parents with lower SES. Moreover, the lower parents' SES was and the more psychological control they imposed, the lower were their educational aspirations for their adolescent children and lower was their child's GPA. The impact of SES was partially mediated by psychological control. The effects were similar for mothers and fathers.     

Diminished weight loss and behavioral compliance during repeated diets in obese patients with type II diabetes.

Compared weight losses during first and second bouts of a very low calorie diet (VLCD) and examined whether decreased compliance might in part explain the decrease in weight loss during the second bout. Forty-five Type II diabetic patients participated in a year-long behavioral weight-reduction program that incorporated a VLCD (400 to 500 kcal/day) during Weeks 1 to 12 and 28 to 40. Weight losses decreased dramatically from the first to the second VLCD (15.54 vs. 1.42 kg, p less than .0001). There was also markedly diminished adherence as assessed by weeks ketonuric, attendance, and completeness of self-monitoring records. The percentage of weeks subjects were in ketosis dropped from 61% during VLCD 1 to 13% during VLCD 2 (p less than .0001). Similarly, subjects attended significantly fewer treatment meetings during VLCD 2 and self-monitored less during VLCD 2 than during VLCD 1. Weeks ketonuric and initial weight accounted for 63% of the variance in weight loss during VLCD 1 (p less than .0001); weeks ketonuric and attendance predicted weight loss during VLCD 2 (p less than .0001), accounting for 54% of the variance. These results suggest the importance of behavioral factors in explaining poorer performance on a repeated diet.     

Amnestic disorders and their role in cognitive theory

Amnesia refers to a disorder of memory, and classical amnesia with continuous problems in aquiring new information is the most studied type of amnesia. The integration into a memory systems model of clinical studies of classical amnesia, cognitive theory, and studies with neuroimaging methods is one of the prime success stories in modern cognitive neuroscience. The clinical spectrum of amnesia encompasses a wide range of disorders ranging from specific encoding deficits for language or visuospatial information to psychogenic amnesia with confusion and loss of memory for personal identity. Two cases are reviewed, one with selective verbal amnesia and the other with focal retrograde amnesia, presenting some puzzles and challenges to current modular thinking about memory that may lead to theoretical advances. An interactive model emphasizing the communication between brain codes and regions in memory may have promise.     

Attributes of successful approaches to weight loss and control

Most weight loss treatments result in only temporary losses, followed by slow regain. This paper examines those factors that are correlated with the most favorable results in terms of loss and maintenance of loss. Weight loss is positively related to self-monitoring, goal setting, social support, and length of treatment. Maintenance of weight loss is correlated with regular physical activity, self-monitoring, and continued contact with therapists. Regain is associated with inconsistent and restrictive dieting, life stress, negative coping style, and emotional or binge eating patterns. The implications drawn from these findings are (a) normalize eating patterns, (b) emphasize exercise, (c) ensure social support, (d) set realistic goal weights, (e) focus on health rather than appearance, (f) focus on self-esteem, and (g) target binge eating.     

Kinematic cues in perceptual weight judgement and their origins in box lifting

When accepting a parcel from another person, we are able to use information about that person’s movement to estimate in advance the weight of the parcel, that is, to judge its weight from observed action. Perceptual weight judgment provides a powerful method to study our interpretation of other people’s actions, but it is not known what sources of information are used in judging weight. We have manipulated full form videos to obtain precise control of the perceived kinematics of a box lifting action, and use this technique to explore the kinematic cues that affect weight judgment. We find that observers rely most on the duration of the lifting movement to judge weight, and make less use of the durations of the grasp phase, when the box is first gripped, or the place phase, when the box is put down. These findings can be compared to the kinematics of natural box lifting behaviour, where we find that the duration of the grasp component is the best predictor of true box weight. The lack of accord between the optimal cues predicted by the natural behaviour and the cues actually used in the perceptual task has implications for our understanding of action observation in terms of a motor simulation. The differences between perceptual and motor behaviour are evidence against a strong version of the motor simulation hypothesis. A. F. de C. Hamilton and D. W. Joyce have contributed equally to this work.