Do disinhibited eaters pay increased attention to food cues?

- Food cues command greater attentional resources than neutral items on the visual dot probe task.
- High disinhibition (Three Factor Eating Questionnaire, TFEQ_D) is predictive of increased attentional bias to high calorie stimuli.
- There is limited evidence for the existence of attentional bias for low calorie food items.
- Stimuli duration has limited impact on attentional bias to food cues.

The Three Factors Eating Questionnaire's measure of disinhibited eating is a robust predictor of long-term weight gain. This experiment explored if disinhibited eaters display attentional bias to food cues. Participants (N = 45) completed a visual dot probe task which measured responses to food (energy dense and low energy foods) and neutral cues. Picture pairs were displayed either for a 100 ms or 2000 ms duration. All participants displayed attentional bias for energy dense food items. Indices of attentional bias were largest in disinhibited eaters. Attentional bias in disinhibited eaters appeared to be underpinned by facilitated attention.