Slashdot Mirror
Pass the Doritos, Scientists Develop Computer Game Targeted At Healthy Choices
MojoKid writes: Psychologists at the University of Exeter and Cardiff University have published a study that demonstrates how a simple computer game can help people lose weight. Participants in the study who played the specialized game lost and average of 1.5 pounds in the first seven days, and 4.5 pounds after six months. They also reduced their daily caloric consumption by 220 calories. Dr. Natalia Lawrence led the team of researchers that developed the computer game for the study. It was designed to train people to resist unhealthy food snack foods through a "stop versus go" process. Participants sat in front of a Pentium 3 PC running Matlab software on a 17-inch monitor. They were then instructed to press certain keys when images of things like fruits and clothes would appear, indicating a "go." But for images of calorie-dense foods (chips and cake, for example) they were instructed not to do anything, indicating a "stop" action.
I believe we already had that game. I distinctly remember, the cake is a lie.
I recently discovered Ruffles with sour cream and cheddar flavor. Heavenly snack!
Worst. Video. Game. Ever!
What's the fascination with the hardware? The fact they're using Matlab to present a slideshow is a unique circumstance. The fact they're using a computer with more power than needed to perform the slideshow isn't. It might be more interesting to know why the researchers are using such old technology.
The subjects were given aversion therapy which they transferred to their eating activities. That's the news; that and the needed hardware exists in a modern home. That's nerd-ish enough. We don't need to obsess over the tools so much; in particular when that is old news.
Why is it called "Pass the Doritos"?
Because "Spot the Fruit" would have been misunderstood.
"things like fruits and clothes"
How many calories in a pound of cotton?
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
... no video game at all. Put down the gadget and move your body.
I don't respond to AC's.
It is therapy. Just because it is graphics on a computer screen does not make it a game.
Another feeble attempt from the SJW crowd trying to showcase "scientists" conducting "research".
The article is worthless, they don't even say how many subjects were used, and a 4.5 weight loss in six months is nothing. But the important thing is that "THE LEAD SCIENTIST HAS A VAGINA !!!
Time for Doritos and league of legends! Fools!
4-5 lbs over 6 months? Jeez, I typically gain 20 lbs over the winter, then lose it over the summer. Winter has Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Christmas, plus rain and crappy weather. Summer has nice bike-riding days.
Dilberito (archived copy)
Related blog post by Scott
This post contains no rudeness or derision of any kind. All arguments are friendly. Terms and exclusions may apply.
So is calorie-dense bacon a GO or a STOP? Everything hinges on the answer to that.
Pentium 3? 17 inch monitor? How long ago did this happen?
News for nerds, stuff from last decade.
At 220 calories per day deficit over 6 months they would lose about 11 lbs of fat.
6*220*30/3500 = 11.3
At 220 calories deficit over 7 days, they would lose .4 lbs of fat.
220*7/3500 = .4
So the 1.5 lbs doesn't make sense (in reality they probably just depleted their glucose storage a little bit which lost a 1+ of water weight).
Fuck your manipulation and your global warming conspiracy theories.
Does anyone else find it weirdly specific that they told us what the processor is on these machines?
If you play DDR every day, you'll lose a lot more than 4.5 pounds in 6 months.
Eat the clothes and wear the fruit.
OP links only to a popular article, which does not reference the original study. Here is the full text of Lawrence NS, Verbruggen F, Morrison S, Adams RC, Chambers CD (2015). Stopping to food can reduce intake. Effects of stimulus-specificity and individual differences in dietary restraint. Appetite, 85, 91-103.: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0195666314005194.
Yes, they used ancient equipment, without explaining why (although that would be irrelevant in a neuroscience paper). Perhaps a Matlab script on a second-hand machine makes for an easily-configured (by experimental psychologists) appliance for various "see an image and type a response" tests. If it is user friendly, the psych lab won't throw it out until they can't load images onto it (no more 5.25" floppies, zip disks, token ring network, etc.).
So now these guys have just proved that you can affect people's preferences for junk food in a video game? Perfect plan by an ad agency ready to collect on the scheme from junk food companies. Now we'll be seeing all kinds of pro-junk-food themed video games...
They already have this. It's called Dance Dance Revolution. It can reach over 1500 calories burned per hour on heavy mode.
Your numbers make sense if 100% of the weight lost came from fat. In practice, it's hard to get results nearly that good from caloric restriction.
If your funding is so bad that you can't afford anything newer than a P3 and a 17" CRT, I have to wonder just how good the research is that you do. Or maybe that you just don't understand how technology has changed.
I encountered the latter in my undergrad days. I was a psych major for a time, and as is tradition they force students to participate in experiments to get free subjects. So one of them was on Internet addiction. This was in the early 2000s, while broadband was not common it was not rare either and the university was of course on a dedicated link. All the questions were around "How long are you connected to the Internet?" and "How often do you log in?" and such things.
I tried to explain to the researcher such questions weren't meaningful to me, my computer was on all the time and I could just use it like any other program. They didn't understand, and figured I didn't understand and kept repeating the question. I tried to explain and demonstrate with their office computer. That failed though, because the thing was so slow it took the better part of a minute to launch IE, which they thought was dialing in to the Internet. For them it wasn't a seamless experience, they only used the Internet when they needed/wanted to since it was so slow. I could not communicate to them that for an ever increasing number of us, it wasn't like that, it was just a part of using a computer.
I've encountered things like this a number of additional times with psychology/sociology/behavioral researchers. Their grasp of computer technology is so poor that their studies are extremely flawed because they don't understand the tools they are using.
That aside, maybe this works, who knows without a link to the paper, but it seems like a more effective use of computers and dieting are the widespread calorie tracker apps. When people actually track what they take in, they often can do a much better job at preventing it from getting excessive.
Unfortunately the way this is presented, and the alleged hardware used makes this sound a little trite and like a silly project. I would like to say that that's probably the result of the reporting. Having flicked through the paper, IMHO this looks like a pretty interesting finding and a worthwhile bit of research.
Paper is here. https://dl.dropboxusercontent....
:
Lets mention a few things:
-Dr Lawrence has made here data available. That's something not enough people in this field have done, much to everyone's detriment.
-"Running Matlab". probably refers to the use of Psychtoolbox(psychtoolbox.org/), rather than some clunky game coded in matlab
-I could find no reference the the pentium 3 or 17" screen anywhere, The paper notes the participants performed the task at home (and the researchers laptop was involved for training). I suspect these specs were copied in error from another notable (but older) research paper. That said, some researches, working with emotion and images, may conduct work with x" screen that seems odd. This is done to be able to compare results with previous works (size of image and distance to image effect some experiments). Don't know if this was the case here.
-The results of this type of simple training are quite interesting, I would point out that participants were also filling out food diary's etc, This in itself could enhance the effect of the training software,
All said, I do have a concern though.
The control group were given a task rating household objects rather than foods. This would have made the control group keenly aware that they were in the control group. I am curious how much of the effect was the result of "increased food consciousness" caused by reading the diaries. I would have preferred to see the control group told to 'reject foods that were imported' or something that still had them filling out food diaries for a legitimate reason.
where's the gaem???
Congratulations for rediscovering classical conditioning.
Psychology is not a science.
These are never good. In fact I think they can really not be called "games" as that sort of implies something someone does for entertainment.
More like "interactive social experiments". These are never fun, or entertaining, and rarely useful. I include all of the "games" where the goal is to make the player feel or think something.
I'm a good cook. I'm a fantastic eater. - Steven Brust
Hee hee.
A Doom clone where a soulsphere was a complete breakfast.
It's great that I no longer want to eat chips and cake, but now I've got one hell of a craving to eat a cardigan sweater!
Chelloveck
I give up on debugging. From now on, SIGSEGV is a feature.