LAUSR

Theories of motivation posit that people will more readily approach positive or appetitive stimuli while they are more likely to avoid negative or aversive stimuli. In recent years, there has been a growing interest in the relationship between biases in approach and avoidance behaviours for food cues and food craving and consumption behaviour. Two paradigms commonly employed by research to investigate this relationship are the Approach Avoidance Task (AAT) and the Stimulus Response Compatibility Task (SRCT). However, it is yet to be determined whether the measures yielded by these tasks reflect the same processes operating in the food craving and consumption domain. The purpose of the present study will be to address whether the AAT and SRCT paradigms provide internally reliable and convergent measures in their assessment of approach/avoidance bias to healthy and unhealthy food stimuli, and whether measures of approach/avoidance biases to healthy and unhealthy food yielded by the AAT and SRCT paradigms demonstrate comparable associations with individual differences in food craving and eating behaviour. The study will require participants to complete an SRCT, and two task variants of the AAT, and an estimate of participants’ approach bias towards unhealthy food relative to healthy food will be computed from each. Analyses will determine the internal reliability of each of the approach bias scores, the degree to which the approach bias scores show convergent validity, and the degree to which the approach bias scores from each task are concurrently associated with individual differences in food craving and eating behaviour.