Touchscreen-based assessment of food approach biases: Investigating reliability and item-specific preferences

Strong cravings for unhealthy foods and implicit tendencies to approach them threaten the physical mental health of vulnerable populations. Yet, measures food have methodological limitations, as existing approach-avoidance tasks (AAT) are often unreliable require specialized hardware. We propose a novel method measure biases: on touchscreen, participants slide their hand either toward item (and away from control images) or it in separate blocks. Adequate attention stimuli is ensured by coupling stimulus category required response. found that this touchscreen-variant AAT yielded reliable bias scores when avoidance were defined movements relative rather than body. Compared images, we an low-calorie but not high-calorie foods. This additionally varied food-by-food basis depending participant's desire eat individual items. Correlations with state trait inconclusive. Future research needs address order effects found, which avoiding first block showed larger biases approaching block, likely due insufficient opportunity practice task. Our findings highlight need retraining paradigms use personalized sets. The task can enrich repertoire eating disorders, obesity cognitive modification.