Psychosomatic Medicine 35:240-249 (1973)
© 1973 American Psychosomatic Society

Performance of Obese Humans on Transfer of Training and Reaction Time Tests

¹ Department of Psychology, The University of Texas at Austin, Austin, Texas 78712

Address for reprint requests: Devendra Singh, PhD, Department of Psychology, University of Texas at Austin, Austin, Texas 78712.

Two experiments were conducted investigating the role of response tendencies in determining the behavior of obese people. In the first experiment, a mirror-drawing transfer task was used to ascertain the amount of negative transfer. 26 obese and 22 normal subjects were given 3 trials to determine baseline performance, followed by 10 trials for negative transfer and finally, tested with the nonpreferred hands (4 trials). Results showed that obese subjects made more errors during negative transfer testing and took more time during nonpreferred hand testing than normal subjects. In the second experiment, 22 obese and 17 normal subjects were given 32 trials to learn to respond as quickly as possible to a positive stimulus and to withhold the response if a negative stimulus appeared. Then, stimuli were reversed (previously positive became negative and vice versa), and subjects were given 64 trials. Results showed that, unlike normal subjects, obese subjects continued to respond at the same speed as during the original task and made more errors when stimuli were reversed. These findings suggest that obese subjects have impaired ability to suppress response tendencies when situational demands are altered.