The role of attention to explain the effects of food commercials on food intake.

Food advertisement have a positive effect on food intake among children. After seeing a food commercials children eat more, especially energy-dense snacks. That there is an effect of food commercials on food intake has been found very often, but the individual susceptibility to food advertisement is still an underexplored area. The main research question in this study is to what extent children are influenced by these food commercials and which psychological mechanisms can explain the differences between children. In this study we want focus on whether attentional bias is related to the individual susceptibility to food advertisement among children. Nowadays, food products are marketed more often on the internet. One form of this new marketing are advergames, which are online games with branded content. The effect of these advergames have been found in earlier studies. We want to examine whether attentional bias can function as a moderator for this effect.

We expect that attentional bias is a possible moderator of the effects of food advertisement on food intake among children.

Directly after the food commercial we will measure calorie intake.

The children will play an advergame (promoting nonfood or food) and afterwards they can snack from different bowls containing food items. Via an eye-tracker eye movements are measured to indicate attentional bias to food cues.