CHANGE BLINDNESS TOWARD FOOD STIMULI IN NORMAL-WEIGHT AND OVERWEIGHT PEOPLE

Many studies reported an attentional bias (AB; i.e., an automatic response) toward food-stimuli (FS) in overweightindividuals. However, the paradigms used to evaluate it usually require rapid esponses that do not allow assessing the behaviour in ecological conditions when FS persist for a long time. This possibility is given by the flicker task (FT) in which two pictures, identical except in one detail, are alternatively presented. The changes are of central interest (rapid detection) or marginal interest (longer detection). FT allows evaluating change blindness (CB), i.e., the inability to detect changes occurring between two consecutive views of a scene. This study aims to evaluate CB toward FS in normal-weight and overweight people. Eighty-eight students (44 overweight / 44 normal-weight) complete a Food-FT. Results showed an AB toward hypercaloric FT when changes were of marginal interest and no betweengroup differences. These findings suggest an AB toward FS in all the individuals, independently from their BMI.