Trial on the Effect of Media Multi-tasking on Attention to Food Cues and Cued Overeating

Obesity, Childhood Clinical Trial

Official title:

Media Multi-tasking and Cued Overeating: Assessing the Pathway and Piloting an Intervention Using an Attentional Network Framework

Clinical Trial Details — Status: Completed

Administrative data

• NCT number: NCT03882957
• Other study ID #: D19065
• Secondary ID: 1R21HD097475-01
• Status: Completed
• Phase: N/A
• Start date: June 5, 2019
• Est. completion date: March 12, 2020

Study information

• Verified date: May 2022
• Source: Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center
• Contact: n/a
• Is FDA regulated: No
• Study type: Interventional

Clinical Trial Summary

Childhood obesity is a critical public health problem in the United States. One factor known to contribute to childhood obesity is excess consumption. Importantly, excess consumption related to weight gain is not necessarily driven by hunger. For example, environmental food cues stimulate brain reward regions and lead to overeating even after a child has eaten to satiety. This type of cued eating is associated with increased attention to food cues; the amount of time a child spends looking at food cues (e.g., food advertisements) is associated with increased caloric intake. However, individual susceptibility to environmental food cues remains unknown. It is proposed that the prevalent practice of media multi-tasking-simultaneously attending to multiple electronic media sources-increases attention to peripheral food cues in the environment and thereby plays an important role in the development of obesity. It is hypothesized that multi-tasking teaches children to engage in constant task switching that makes them more responsive to peripheral cues, many of which are potentially harmful (such as those that promote overeating). The overarching hypothesis is that media multi-tasking alters the attentional networks of the brain that control attention to environmental cues. High media multi-tasking children are therefore particularly susceptible to food cues, thereby leading to increased cued eating. It is also predicted that attention modification training can provide a protective effect against detrimental attentional processing caused multi-tasking, by increasing the proficiency of the attention networks. These hypotheses will be tested by assessing the pathway between media-multitasking, attention to food cues, and cued eating. It will also be examined whether it is possible to intervene on this pathway by piloting an at-home attention modification training intervention designed to reduce attention to food cues. It is our belief that this research will lead to the development of low-cost, scalable tools that can train attention networks so that children are less influenced by peripheral food cues, a known cause of overeating. For example, having children practice attention modification intervention tasks regularly (which could be accomplished through user-friendly computer games or cell phone/tablet apps) might offset the negative attentional effects of media multi-tasking.

Description:

[3/14/2020]: Study recruitment temporarily halted due to the COVID-19 pandemic

Recruitment information / eligibility

• Status: Completed
• Enrollment: 92
• Est. completion date: March 12, 2020
• Est. primary completion date: March 12, 2020
• Accepts healthy volunteers: Accepts Healthy Volunteers
• Gender: All
• Age group: 13 Years to 17 Years

Eligibility

Inclusion Criteria:

• N/A.

Exclusion Criteria:

• Inadequate English proficiency, a vision disorder that is not corrected with corrective lenses, and relevant food allergies.

Related Conditions & MeSH terms

• Attention Concentration Difficulty
• Hyperphagia
• Obesity, Childhood
• Pediatric Obesity

Intervention

Behavioral:
• Sustained attention
participants will complete a sustained attention task
• media multi-task
participants will complete multiple media tasks at the same time

Other:
• Video
participants will watch a video of media tasks being completed

Locations

Country	Name	City	State
United States	Dartmouth-Hithchock Medical Center	Lebanon	New Hampshire

Sponsors (3)

Lead Sponsor	Collaborator
Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center	Dartmouth College, Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD)

Country where clinical trial is conducted

United States, 

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* Note: There are 73 references in all — Click here to view all references

Outcome

Type	Measure	Description	Time frame	Safety issue
Primary	Amount of Time Spent Looking at Food Cues While Playing a Media Game	Eye-tracking will be used to measure the amount of time spent looking at static food cues while participants play a media game on the computer. The amount time spent looking at a food cue is a measure how much attention was given to the food cue. The longer the looking time, the greater amount of attention.	approximately 15 minutes post-intervention
Primary	Amount of Snack Foods Consumed Post-intervention	The amount of kcals consumed of snack foods after participants have completed the intervention.	approximately 30 minutes post-intervention
Primary	Daily Usual Media Multi-tasking	Participants reported on their usual media multitasking using the short form media multitasking index. This index asks about media multitasking with other print and digital media during four primary activities: 1) watching television or movies, 2) playing video games, 3) reading books or magazines (not assigned for school), and 4) doing homework. For each activity, participants reported the frequency with which they multitasked by engaging in the other activities by using a 5-point likert scale (i.e., 0=Never, 1=Rarely, 2=Sometimes, 3=Often, 4=Always). A usual media multitasking score was computed by taking the average of the Likert response. The score ranges from 0 to 4 with a higher score indicative of higher self-reported usual media multitasking.	approximately 10 minutes prior to the intervention