The excessive consumption of energy-dense but nutrient-poor foods and drinks can lead to many health problems. There is thus an increasing need for tools that may help people reduce the consumption of such foods and drinks. Training people to consistently respond or not respond to food items has been shown to reliably change their subjective evaluations of and choices for these items, mostly within laboratory settings. However, evidence on whether such trainings can also modify real consumption behavior remains mixed.

Najberg et al. developed a mobile-based response training game that combines two training tasks, one in which people consistently do not respond to sugary drinks (i.e., the go/no-go training), and one in which they consistently respond to water items rapidly (i.e., the cue-approach training). Recent work showed that after the training, participants in the experimental group reported more reduction in liking for sugary drinks and more increase in liking for water items compared to the control group. However, both groups showed equivalent reduction in self-reported consumption of sugary drinks (Najberg et al. 2023a). 

In the current study, Najberg and colleagues will further examine the efficacy of the gamified response training, by testing whether the training can help people resist the consumption of sugary drinks (Najberg et al. 2023b). Participants will be divided into experimental and control groups, and will receive the respective training for a minimum of seven days (and up to 20 days). After completing the training, they will be asked to avoid the trained sugary drinks, and the number of days in which they successfully adhere to this restrictive diet will be used as the dependent variable. Reporting the time at which one consumed a certain drink is presumably easier than reporting the exact volume consumed (cf. Najberg et al. 2023a). Furthermore, certain diets may require people to avoid specific foods and drinks entirely, rather than merely reduce the amount of consumption. Examining whether the training will be effective in this setting will therefore be informative. The authors will additionally examine whether the amount of training one completes, and the changes in subjective valuation of drinks after training, will be correlated with the successful avoidance of sugary drinks. These results will offer insights into the underlying mechanisms of the training and provide guidance on how they may best be implemented in applied settings.

This Stage 1 manuscript was evaluated over three rounds of in-depth reviews by three expert reviewers and the recommender. The recommender judged that the manuscript met the Stage 1 criteria and therefore awarded in-principle acceptance (IPA).

 

Level of bias control achieved: Level 6. No part of the data or evidence that will be used to answer the research question yet exists and no part will be generated until after IPA.

 

List of eligible PCI-RR-friendly journals:
 

• Advances in Cognitive Psychology
• Collabra: Psychology
• F1000Research
• Journal of Cognition
• Peer Community Journal
• PeerJ
• Royal Society Open Science
• Studia Psychologica
• Swiss Psychology Open

References

1. Najberg, H., Mouthon, M., Coppin, G., & Spierer, L. (2023a). Reduction in sugar drink valuation and consumption with gamified executive control training. Scientific Reports, 13, 10659. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-023-36859-x

2. Najberg, H., Tapparel, M., & Spierer, L. (2023b). Sugary drinks devaluation with response training helps to resist their consumption. In principle acceptance of Version 4 by Peer Community in Registered Reports. https://osf.io/97aez