2018 Volume 31 Issue 1 Pages 9-19
We investigated the role of attention and eating simulation in satiety changes induced by repeated exposure to the visual appearance of food. Participants evaluated their subjective impressions of visually exposed and unexposed food before and after observing movies depicting food being removed from a dish. When participants attended to the food in the movie, changes in appetite from pre- to post-observation ratings were higher for unexposed than for exposed food. However, satiety changes were not observed when participants attended to letters superimposed onto the movie. Additionally, satiety did not change when the movie was played backward so that it did not simulate eating. The results showed the importance of attention in the satiety changes elicited by visual exposure to food. Furthermore, the results also suggest that the observation of visual images triggering the simulation of eating action may play an important role in the satiety changes induced by visual exposure to food.