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

May 19, 2022 updated by: Diane Gilbert-Diamond, Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center

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

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.

Study Overview

Status

Completed

Conditions

Intervention / Treatment

Detailed Description

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

Study Type

Interventional

Enrollment (Actual)

92

Phase

  • Not Applicable

Contacts and Locations

This section provides the contact details for those conducting the study, and information on where this study is being conducted.

Study Locations

  • United States
    • New Hampshire
      • Lebanon, New Hampshire, United States, 03756
        • Dartmouth-Hithchock Medical Center

Participation Criteria

Researchers look for people who fit a certain description, called eligibility criteria. Some examples of these criteria are a person's general health condition or prior treatments.

Eligibility Criteria

Ages Eligible for Study

13 years to 17 years (Child)

Accepts Healthy Volunteers

Yes

Genders Eligible for Study

All

Description

Inclusion Criteria:

  • N/A.

Exclusion Criteria:

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

Study Plan

This section provides details of the study plan, including how the study is designed and what the study is measuring.

How is the study designed?

Design Details

  • Primary Purpose: Prevention
  • Allocation: Randomized
  • Interventional Model: Crossover Assignment
  • Masking: Single

Arms and Interventions

Participant Group / Arm
Intervention / Treatment
Active Comparator: Video
videos of media tasks being completed
Other: Video
participants will watch a video of media tasks being completed
Experimental: media multi-task
media tasks
Behavioral: media multi-task
participants will complete multiple media tasks at the same time
Experimental: sustained attention task
a cognitive task that trains sustained attention
Behavioral: Sustained attention
participants will complete a sustained attention task

What is the study measuring?

Primary Outcome Measures

Outcome Measure
Measure Description
Time Frame
Amount of Time Spent Looking at Food Cues While Playing a Media Game
Time Frame: approximately 15 minutes post-intervention
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
Amount of Snack Foods Consumed Post-intervention
Time Frame: approximately 30 minutes post-intervention
The amount of kcals consumed of snack foods after participants have completed the intervention.
approximately 30 minutes post-intervention
Daily Usual Media Multi-tasking
Time Frame: approximately 10 minutes prior to the intervention
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

Collaborators and Investigators

This is where you will find people and organizations involved with this study.

Sponsor

Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center

Collaborators

Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD)
Dartmouth College

Investigators

  • Principal Investigator: Diane Gilbert-Diamond, ScD, Dartmouth College

Publications and helpful links

The person responsible for entering information about the study voluntarily provides these publications. These may be about anything related to the study.

General Publications

Study record dates

These dates track the progress of study record and summary results submissions to ClinicalTrials.gov. Study records and reported results are reviewed by the National Library of Medicine (NLM) to make sure they meet specific quality control standards before being posted on the public website.

Study Major Dates

Study Start (Actual)

June 5, 2019

Primary Completion (Actual)

March 12, 2020

Study Completion (Actual)

March 12, 2020

Study Registration Dates

First Submitted

March 19, 2019

First Submitted That Met QC Criteria

March 19, 2019

First Posted (Actual)

March 20, 2019

Study Record Updates

Last Update Posted (Actual)

June 14, 2022

Last Update Submitted That Met QC Criteria

May 19, 2022

Last Verified

May 1, 2022

More Information

Terms related to this study

Keywords

Additional Relevant MeSH Terms

Other Study ID Numbers

  • D19065
  • 1R21HD097475-01 (U.S. NIH Grant/Contract)

Plan for Individual participant data (IPD)

Plan to Share Individual Participant Data (IPD)?

NO

Drug and device information, study documents

Studies a U.S. FDA-regulated drug product

No

Studies a U.S. FDA-regulated device product

No

This information was retrieved directly from the website clinicaltrials.gov without any changes. If you have any requests to change, remove or update your study details, please contact register@clinicaltrials.gov. As soon as a change is implemented on clinicaltrials.gov, this will be updated automatically on our website as well.

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