TY - JOUR
T1 - Development and Evaluation of a Virtual Reality Puzzle Game to Decrease Food Intake
T2 - Randomized Controlled Trial
AU - Liu, Yunxin
AU - Stamos, Angelos
AU - Dewitte, Siegfried
AU - van Berlo, Zeph M C
AU - van der Laan, Nynke
N1 - Funding Information:
The data that are presented in this paper were collected during a project (314-98-107) that was part of the Creative Industry - Knowledge Innovation Mapping (KIEM) research program. The project was partly financed by the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO) and partly by a private partner (VR Owl). This work was supported by the NWO (grant no. 314-98-107).
Publisher Copyright:
© Yunxin Liu, Angelos Stamos, Siegfried Dewitte, Zeph M C van Berlo, Laura N van der Laan. Originally published in JMIR Serious Games (https://games.jmir.org), 03.02.2022. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work, first published in JMIR Serious Games, is properly cited. The complete bibliographic information, a link to the original publication on https://games.jmir.org, as well as this copyright and license information must be included.
PY - 2022/1
Y1 - 2022/1
N2 - BACKGROUND: Virtual reality (VR) has gained popularity in daily life, and VR food cues seem to elicit food cravings, similar to real food cues. However, little is known about the impact of VR food cues on actual food intake.OBJECTIVE: In real life (RL), exposure to food cues in a situation in which the desire to eat food interferes with the completion of a food-related task reduces the subsequent food intake (ie, the pre-exposure effect). In this study, we examine, on the one hand, whether the pre-exposure effect could be replicated in RL and, on the other hand, whether this effect could be extended to VR contexts.METHODS: The study used a 2 (stimulus type: food vs nonfood) × 2 (mode: VR vs RL) between-subject design (n=175). Participants were randomly assigned to 1 of the 4 conditions.RESULTS: We found the main effect of mode on food intake, with a higher food intake after both VR conditions than after RL conditions (P=.02). In addition, among female participants, we found that exposure to both food cues (ie, VR and RL) resulted in lower food intake than exposure to both nonfood cues (P=.05). In contrast, this effect was not observed among male participants (P=.34). Additionally, VR and RL cues generated similar emotional and behavioral responses (eg, arousal and game difficulty).CONCLUSIONS: We were unable to replicate the exposure effect in our complete sample. Subgroup analyses, however, showed that for women, exposure to food cues (either in VR or in RL) reduces food intake, indicating that a VR pre-exposure procedure may effectively be applied exclusively for women.TRIAL REGISTRATION: ClinicalTrials.gov NCT05169996; https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT05169996.
AB - BACKGROUND: Virtual reality (VR) has gained popularity in daily life, and VR food cues seem to elicit food cravings, similar to real food cues. However, little is known about the impact of VR food cues on actual food intake.OBJECTIVE: In real life (RL), exposure to food cues in a situation in which the desire to eat food interferes with the completion of a food-related task reduces the subsequent food intake (ie, the pre-exposure effect). In this study, we examine, on the one hand, whether the pre-exposure effect could be replicated in RL and, on the other hand, whether this effect could be extended to VR contexts.METHODS: The study used a 2 (stimulus type: food vs nonfood) × 2 (mode: VR vs RL) between-subject design (n=175). Participants were randomly assigned to 1 of the 4 conditions.RESULTS: We found the main effect of mode on food intake, with a higher food intake after both VR conditions than after RL conditions (P=.02). In addition, among female participants, we found that exposure to both food cues (ie, VR and RL) resulted in lower food intake than exposure to both nonfood cues (P=.05). In contrast, this effect was not observed among male participants (P=.34). Additionally, VR and RL cues generated similar emotional and behavioral responses (eg, arousal and game difficulty).CONCLUSIONS: We were unable to replicate the exposure effect in our complete sample. Subgroup analyses, however, showed that for women, exposure to food cues (either in VR or in RL) reduces food intake, indicating that a VR pre-exposure procedure may effectively be applied exclusively for women.TRIAL REGISTRATION: ClinicalTrials.gov NCT05169996; https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT05169996.
KW - Food cravings
KW - Hedonic consumption
KW - Pre-exposure
KW - Self-control
KW - Virtual reality
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85124137944&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.2196/31747
DO - 10.2196/31747
M3 - Article
C2 - 35113028
SN - 2291-9279
VL - 10
SP - e31747
JO - JMIR Serious Games
JF - JMIR Serious Games
IS - 1
M1 - e31747
ER -