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Human spatial memory is biased towards high-calorie foods: a cross-cultural online experiment

BACKGROUND: Human memory appears to prioritise locations of high-calorie foods, likely as an adaptation for foraging within fluctuating ancestral food environments. Importantly, this “high-calorie bias” in human spatial memory seems to yield consequences for individual eating behaviour in modern foo...

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Autores principales: de Vries, Rachelle, Boesveldt, Sanne, de Vet, Emely
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: BioMed Central 2022
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8832830/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35144639
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12966-022-01252-w
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author de Vries, Rachelle
Boesveldt, Sanne
de Vet, Emely
author_facet de Vries, Rachelle
Boesveldt, Sanne
de Vet, Emely
author_sort de Vries, Rachelle
collection PubMed
description BACKGROUND: Human memory appears to prioritise locations of high-calorie foods, likely as an adaptation for foraging within fluctuating ancestral food environments. Importantly, this “high-calorie bias” in human spatial memory seems to yield consequences for individual eating behaviour in modern food-abundant settings. However, as studies have mainly been conducted in European (Dutch) populations to date, we investigated whether the existence of the cognitive bias can be reasonably generalised across countries that vary on culturally-relevant domains, such as that of the USA and Japan. Furthermore, we investigated whether sociodemographic factors moderate the expression of the high-calorie spatial memory bias in different populations. METHODS: In a cross-cultural online experiment, we measured the food location memory of diverse participants from the USA (N = 72; 44.4% Male; 54 ± 15.99 years) and Japan (N = 74; 56.8% Male; 50.85 ± 17.32 years), using a validated computer-based spatial memory task with standardised images of high-calorie and low-calorie foods. To directly compare the magnitude of the high-calorie spatial memory bias in a broader cultural scope, we also included data from a previous online experiment that identically tested the food spatial memory of a Dutch sample (N = 405; 56.7% Male; 47.57 ± 17.48 years). RESULTS: In the US sample, individuals more accurately recalled (i.e. had lower pointing errors for) locations of high-calorie foods versus that of low-calorie alternatives (Mean difference = -99.23 pixels, 95% CI = [-197.19, -1.28]) – regardless of one’s hedonic preferences, familiarity with foods, and encoding times. Likewise, individuals in the Japanese sample displayed an enhanced memory for locations of high-calorie (savoury-tasting) foods (Mean difference = -40.41 pixels, 95% CI = [-76.14, -4.68]), while controlling for the same set of potential confounders. The magnitude of the high-calorie bias in spatial memory was similar across populations (i.e. the USA, Japan, and the Netherlands), as well as across diverse sociodemographic groups within a population. CONCLUSIONS: Our results demonstrate that the high-calorie bias in spatial memory transcends sociocultural boundaries. Since the cognitive bias may negatively impact on our dietary decisions, it would be wise to invest in strategies that intervene on our seemingly universal ability to efficiently locate calorie-rich foods. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12966-022-01252-w.
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spelling pubmed-88328302022-02-15 Human spatial memory is biased towards high-calorie foods: a cross-cultural online experiment de Vries, Rachelle Boesveldt, Sanne de Vet, Emely Int J Behav Nutr Phys Act Research BACKGROUND: Human memory appears to prioritise locations of high-calorie foods, likely as an adaptation for foraging within fluctuating ancestral food environments. Importantly, this “high-calorie bias” in human spatial memory seems to yield consequences for individual eating behaviour in modern food-abundant settings. However, as studies have mainly been conducted in European (Dutch) populations to date, we investigated whether the existence of the cognitive bias can be reasonably generalised across countries that vary on culturally-relevant domains, such as that of the USA and Japan. Furthermore, we investigated whether sociodemographic factors moderate the expression of the high-calorie spatial memory bias in different populations. METHODS: In a cross-cultural online experiment, we measured the food location memory of diverse participants from the USA (N = 72; 44.4% Male; 54 ± 15.99 years) and Japan (N = 74; 56.8% Male; 50.85 ± 17.32 years), using a validated computer-based spatial memory task with standardised images of high-calorie and low-calorie foods. To directly compare the magnitude of the high-calorie spatial memory bias in a broader cultural scope, we also included data from a previous online experiment that identically tested the food spatial memory of a Dutch sample (N = 405; 56.7% Male; 47.57 ± 17.48 years). RESULTS: In the US sample, individuals more accurately recalled (i.e. had lower pointing errors for) locations of high-calorie foods versus that of low-calorie alternatives (Mean difference = -99.23 pixels, 95% CI = [-197.19, -1.28]) – regardless of one’s hedonic preferences, familiarity with foods, and encoding times. Likewise, individuals in the Japanese sample displayed an enhanced memory for locations of high-calorie (savoury-tasting) foods (Mean difference = -40.41 pixels, 95% CI = [-76.14, -4.68]), while controlling for the same set of potential confounders. The magnitude of the high-calorie bias in spatial memory was similar across populations (i.e. the USA, Japan, and the Netherlands), as well as across diverse sociodemographic groups within a population. CONCLUSIONS: Our results demonstrate that the high-calorie bias in spatial memory transcends sociocultural boundaries. Since the cognitive bias may negatively impact on our dietary decisions, it would be wise to invest in strategies that intervene on our seemingly universal ability to efficiently locate calorie-rich foods. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12966-022-01252-w. BioMed Central 2022-02-10 /pmc/articles/PMC8832830/ /pubmed/35144639 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12966-022-01252-w Text en © The Author(s) 2022 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Open AccessThis article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) . The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) ) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated in a credit line to the data.
spellingShingle Research
de Vries, Rachelle
Boesveldt, Sanne
de Vet, Emely
Human spatial memory is biased towards high-calorie foods: a cross-cultural online experiment
title Human spatial memory is biased towards high-calorie foods: a cross-cultural online experiment
title_full Human spatial memory is biased towards high-calorie foods: a cross-cultural online experiment
title_fullStr Human spatial memory is biased towards high-calorie foods: a cross-cultural online experiment
title_full_unstemmed Human spatial memory is biased towards high-calorie foods: a cross-cultural online experiment
title_short Human spatial memory is biased towards high-calorie foods: a cross-cultural online experiment
title_sort human spatial memory is biased towards high-calorie foods: a cross-cultural online experiment
topic Research
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8832830/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35144639
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12966-022-01252-w
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