Accepted for/Published in: JMIR mHealth and uHealth
Date Submitted: Sep 24, 2018
Open Peer Review Period: Sep 27, 2018 - Nov 1, 2018
Date Accepted: Mar 24, 2019
(closed for review but you can still tweet)
Warning: This is an author submission that is not peer-reviewed or edited. Preprints - unless they show as "accepted" - should not be relied on to guide clinical practice or health-related behavior and should not be reported in news media as established information.
Effects of a Smartphone-Based Approach-Avoidance Intervention on Chocolate Craving and Consumption: Randomized Controlled Trial
Background:
Repeatedly pushing high-calorie food stimuli away based on joystick movements has been found to reduce approach biases toward these stimuli. Some studies also found that such avoidance training reduced consumption of high-calorie foods.
Objective:
This study aimed to test effects of a smartphone-based approach-avoidance intervention on chocolate craving and consumption, to make such interventions suitable for daily use.
Methods:
Within a 10-day period, regular chocolate eaters (n=105, 86% female) performed five sessions during which they continuously avoided (ie, swiped upward) chocolate stimuli (experimental group, n=35), performed five sessions during which they approached and avoided chocolate stimuli equally often (placebo control group, n=35), or did not perform any training sessions (inactive control group, n=35). Training effects were measured during laboratory sessions before and after the intervention period and further continuously through daily ecological momentary assessment.
Results:
Self-reported chocolate craving and consumption as well as body fat mass significantly decreased from pre- to postmeasurement across all groups. Ecological momentary assessment reports evidenced no differences in chocolate craving and consumption between intervention days and rest days as a function of the group.
Conclusions:
A smartphone-based approach-avoidance training did not affect eating-related and anthropometric measures over and above measurement-based changes in this study. Future controlled studies need to examine whether other techniques of modifying food approach tendencies show an add-on benefit over conventional, monitoring-based intervention effects.
ClinicalTrial:
AsPredicted 8203; https://aspredicted.org/pt9df.pdf.
Citation
Request queued. Please wait while the file is being generated. It may take some time.
Copyright
© The authors. All rights reserved. This is a privileged document currently under peer-review/community review (or an accepted/rejected manuscript). Authors have provided JMIR Publications with an exclusive license to publish this preprint on it's website for review and ahead-of-print citation purposes only. While the final peer-reviewed paper may be licensed under a cc-by license on publication, at this stage authors and publisher expressively prohibit redistribution of this draft paper other than for review purposes.