Enhanced Cue Exposure Therapy for Negative Emotional Eating

The current study aims to evaluate the efficacy of Enhanced Cue Exposure Therapy (E-CET) in reducing negative emotional eating (NEE), compared to an active control intervention, behavioral lifestyle intervention (BLI), in a parallel-group, participant-blinded, randomized controlled trial. The secondary aim is to evaluate whether changes in conditioned stimulus-unconditioned stimulus (CS-US) expectancies mediate the changes in NEE.

Participants will be randomly assigned to either the experimental treatment or control BLI group. Participants in the experimental group will receive 6 weeks of E-CET treatment and those in the control group will receive 6 weeks of behavioral counselling integrating behavioral strategies for making changes related to diet and exercise. Outcomes will be assessed at baseline, posttreatment, and 3- and 12-month follow-ups. Research question 1: Is E-CET an efficacious intervention for reducing NEE? Hypothesis 1: E-CET will lead to greater reductions in NEE at posttreatment and follow-up compared to BLI. Research question 2: Does E-CET work via the violation of the CS-US expectancies? Hypothesis 2: Changes in the believability of CS-US expectancies will mediate the treatment effects of E-CET on NEE.