Effects of motor inhibition and response training on food choices and evaluations: a pre-registered study

Abstract

Recently, we used a new control condition (no-food training) to disentangle the effects of unhealthy food go/no-go training on food choices (submitted oral communication). Yet, we did not found an effect of training, suggesting that previous studies could have overestimated the effects. Building on that study, we present the details of a pre-registered study, to be submitted as a Registered Report, that aims to clarify what are the motor training conditions (i.e., go vs. no-go) that can influence food choices. We test the following main hypotheses: 1) food go/no-go training influences unhealthy and healthy food choices and evaluations; 2) this influence results from a decrease in the desire to eat unhealthy foods (unhealthy foods-no-go) and/or from an increase in the desire to eat healthy foods (healthy foods-go). We also assess if these effects can generalise to untrained unhealthy and/or healthy foods in different training conditions. This pre-registered study includes 4 training tasks (unhealthy food-go + healthy food-go vs. healthy food-go vs. unhealthy food-no-go vs. no-food go/no-go) manipulated between-subjects. We also manipulate within-subjects the type foods (trained vs. untrained). The primary dependent variables are 1) the differences in desire to eat between trained and untrained foods from pre- to post-training; and 2) the likelihood of choosing unhealthy/healthy foods in a forced-choice task. This “work in progress†presentation aims to discuss 1) updates on this study (e.g., data collection and results); 2) how the results can inform us about optimal training conditions; and 3) opportunities and challenges of submitting a Registered Report.