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• Higher cravings for food images that require no extra preparation before consumption. • Higher cravings for ready-to-eat food are further amplified by hunger. • Differences in readiness-to-eat of stimuli can confound findings in food studies. • Healthy eating campaigns should depict fully prepared food for effectiveness. Studies investigating the cognitive, behavioural, and/or neurophysiological responses to food images have commonly observed stronger effects for palatable high calorie than low calorie foods. This has been attributed to the higher incentive value of high calorie foods which in turn triggers cravings and thus affects consumption. Yet, food cravings are not solely determined by intrinsic food properties, such as calorie contents, but also depend on extrinsic factors, such as the physical availability of food items. Here we argue that in many studies the images employed to represent high and low-calorie foods often also differ systematically in their depicted readiness-to-eat (i.e., amount of preparation required before consumption) - with low calorie images more frequently showing food in an unprepared state. Thus, we aimed to assess if readiness-to-eat in food images affects self-reported cravings; and therefore, potentially amplifies response differences between food categories unmatched in this aspect. Participants (N = 224) rated images of food matched in calorie density either shown in a ready-to-eat state or in a state requiring some further preparation (cooking, unpacking or peeling, slicing). Readiness-to-eat reliably affected participants' cravings with higher cravings for ready-to-eat foods. Furthermore, a linear regression model revealed that the size of the effect was linked to participants' current hunger levels. Based on these findings, we recommend that future studies interested in comparing the effects of certain intrinsic food properties on cravings, should ensure that stimuli are matched for their readiness-to-eat to avoid confounding effects. Practical implications on food advertising and promotion are also discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Attentional control settings have an important role in guiding visual behaviour. Previous work within cognitive psychology has found that the deployment of general attentional control settings can be modulated by training. However, research has not yet established whether long-term modifications of one particular type of attentional control setting can be induced. To address this, we investigated persistent alterations to feature search mode, also known as an attentional bias, towards an arbitrary stimulus in healthy participants. Subjects were biased towards the colour green by an information sheet. Attentional bias was assessed using a change detection task. After an interval of either 1 or 2 weeks, participants were then retested on the same change detection task, tested on a different change detection task where colour was irrelevant, or were biased towards an alternative colour. One experiment included trials in which the distractor stimuli (but never the target stimuli) were green. The key finding was that green stimuli in the second task attracted attention, despite this impairing task performance. Furthermore, inducing a second attentional bias did not override the initial bias toward green objects. The attentional bias also persisted for at least two weeks. It is argued that this persistent attentional bias is mediated by a chronic change to participants’ attentional control settings, which is aided by long-term representations involving contextual cueing. We speculate that similar changes to attentional control settings and continuous cueing may relate to attentional biases observed in psychopathologies. Targeting these biases may be a productive approach to treatment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]