The Effects of Eating Behaviors and Exercise Patterns on the Processing of Food and Exercise Related Stimuli

The effectiveness of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) for eating disorders has established a link between cognitive processes and unhealthy eating behaviors. However, the relationship between individual differences in unhealthy eating behaviors that are not related to clinical eating disorders, such as overeating and restrained eating, and the processing of food related verbal stimuli remains undetermined. Furthermore, the cognitive processes that promote unhealthy and healthy exercise patterns remain virtually unexplored by previous research. The present study compared individual differences in attitudes and behaviors around eating and exercise to responses to food and exercise-related words using a Lexical Decision Task (LDT). Participants were recruited from Colby (n = 61) and the greater Waterville community (n = 16). The results indicate the following trends in the data: Individuals who scored high in “thin ideal” responded faster to food-related words than individuals with low “thin Ideal” scores did. Regarding the exercise-related data, individuals who engage in more “low intensity exercise” responded faster to exercise-related words than individuals who engage in less “low intensity exercise” did. These findings suggest that cognitive schemata about food and exercise might mediate individual’s eating and exercise patterns.

Differential Habituation of Male Betta Splendens to Qualitatively Different Stimuli

Habituation is a learning mechanism that functions to decrease the amount of energy and attention focused on a certain stimuli. Male Siamese Fighting Fish, Betta splendens, are territorial animals that defend their territories using a number of aggressive displays. Male Bettas have previously shown the ability to habituate to the presence of a conspecific male when visually exposed to each other. Due to the costly nature of many of the male Betta’s displays, I hypothesized that male Bettas should differentially habituate to qualitatively different stimuli. I presented each of three groups of male Betta splendens with a different stimulus, each presenting a different level of interactivity. I predicted that the Bettas would be more likely to habituate to a less interactive stimulus than a more interactive one. No significant habituation was observed in any of the groups and no significant differences in latency to display or length of display between all three groups were observed. However, overall data trends suggest that habituation was indeed occurring and that the three different stimuli elicited different levels of display. The limited amount of visual exposure to the stimuli in this experiment might account for why results were insignificant.