Food pleasantness affects visual selective attention

Abstract

Fundamental to adaptive behaviour is the ability to select environmental objects that best satisfy current needs and preferences. Here we investigated whether temporary changes in food preference influence visual selective attention. To this end, we exploited the fact that when a food is eaten to satiety its motivational value and perceived pleasantness decrease relative to other foods not eaten in the meal, an effect termed sensory-specific satiety. A total of 26 hungry participants were fed until sated with one of two palatable foods. Before and after selective satiation, participants rated the pleasantness of the two foods and then viewed the same as stimuli on a computer screen while attention was assessed by a visual probe task. Results showed that the attentional bias for the food eaten decreased markedly from pre- to postsatiety, along with the subjective pleasantness for that food. By contrast, subjective pleasantness and attentional bias for the food not eaten did not show any such decrease. These findings suggest that the allocation of visual selective attention is flexibly and rapidly adjusted to reflect temporary shift in relative preference for different foods.