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Prof David Booth
Qualifications: MA BSc Chemistry (Oxford); BA Philosophy & Psychology (London); PhD Biochemistry (London); DSc Psychology (Birmingham).
Position: Honorary Professor
Telephone Number: 0121 414 4938
Email: d.a.booth@bham.ac.uk
Research Interests
Fundamental Psychology:
Individual Cognition, Motivation and Emotion
Cognitive bio-social approaches to human and animal life
Applied Psychology:
Health Psychology; Psychology in physical medicine
Customer Psychology; Psychology of product development
AN INDIVIDUALS MENTATION IN A SITUATION
http://psychology.bham.ac.uk/research/groups/language/multimodal.shtml
http://psychology.bham.ac.uk/research/groups/applied/empathy.shtml
Individualised cognitive analysis provides direct evidence as to what is going on in a person's mind (or in any well adapted system's performance) while tackling a task such as recognising and acting appropriately towards an object, a social situation, an emotional state or a bodily sensation. The evidence can be purely verbal, from an adequately structured conversation, or can be concrete actions or expressed dispositions in response to physically defined stimuli or culturally meaningful symbols (such as words or pictures).
My approach is to compare the person's responses to variants of the situation under test that disconfound features from each other and from their context. The data from one test occasion are analysed by multi-channel discrimination scaling: this is the simplest formulation of the classic ideas of dimensions of mental processing, learnt Gestalten and the just noticeable difference, and in that sense forms the logical foundation of all psychology.
NUTRITIVE AND OTHER HEALTH-RELATED BEHAVIOUR
http://psychology.bham.ac.uk/research/groups/applied/health.shtml
Much of my research in Health Psychology concerns the consequences for long-term health of habitual patterns of eating, drinking and moving about. A "psychosocial short-cut" to identifying and advising on the healthier sorts of behaviour is to relate diverse individuals choices as described in their culture to outcomes for their health, such as overweight and obesity, diabetes and high blood pressure. This new approach to psychometrics was first developed for long-term avoidance of body-weight gain. The directly evidence-based individual tailoring of advice it enables is now being extended to: the assessment and reduction of individuals fat and salt intakes; the efficacy of management of joint mobility and pain in arthritis, rheumatic fatigue, and cardiovascular health following heart surgery; and the development of interactive digital media for evidence-based health education in youngsters and adults.
Social cognitive path analyses have been developed from the psychology of dieting and (failures in) weight control. They are being extended to psychological problems in physical medicine, such as coping with the diagnosis of rheumatoid arthritis at a relatively young age. More open-ended investigations are also conducted into the personal meaning and social functions of the healthy and unhealthy practices.
Such social psychological approaches to health need underpinning by understanding of the "psychobiological system," i.e. the physiological consequences of the healthier and less healthy behaviour and their feedback onto such activities through the brain. This is vital for relating the advised behaviour both to effective support from the environment (such as food formulations and services) and to the physical effects of any medical interventions.
Thus, we continue research on the visceral and metabolic after-effects of eating and drinking that satiate hunger and thirst, modulate intellectual and social performance and mood, and induce preferences and aversions all usually via some processes of learning. This work uses intakes and ratings in the way we first developed, to measure manipulated physiological processes that have been disconfounded from the learnt expectations triggered by sensory stimulation, linguistic information and social context. (This contrasts with the dominant practice of assuming that parameters of nutrient intake and the wordings of ratings measure particular influences on appetite.) The satiating effects of fats and carbohydrates and the cognitive effects of caffeine are under study by dose-response designs within individuals as they ingest food and drink in a familiar way.
PSYCHOLOGICAL SCIENCE OF SERVICE AND PRODUCT USES
Individual cognition is uniquely capable of measuring simultaneously the actual material ("sensory") and symbolic ("marketing") influences on each customer's shopping and usage choices (and on the descriptions to which product sensory profiling and marketing concept specification are limited). Aspects of the physical product and marketed brand interact in the individual user's mind and their joint impact on behaviour is modelled by discrimination scaling of that person's disposition to acquire the various propositions generated at that stage of product development. Aggregation of these personally ideal hyper-spaces across a representative panel or sampled sub-segments gives uniquely precise and operational estimates of current market response.
This approach has been implemented in a number of academic and commercial demonstrations. It is being compared with currently established statistical treatments of grouped verbal data from sensory and market research. It is also being used to understand the neurophysiological receptor types through which manufacturing processes stimulate the cognitive integration of individuals choices and pleasures from texture, flavour and appearance of important food and drink products in everyday usages.
Publications
Booth, D.A., Lewis, V.J., & Blair, A.J. (1990). Dietary restraint and binge eating: pseudo-quantitative anthropology for a medicalised problem habit? Appetite 14, 116-119.
Lewis, V.J., Blair, A.J., & Booth, D.A. (1992). Outcome of group therapy for body-image emotionality and weight-control self-efficacy. Behavioural Psychotherapy (Clinical Section) 20, 155-166.
Conner, M.T., & Booth, D.A. (1992). Combining measurement of food taste and consumer preference in the individual: reliability, precision and stability data. Journal of Food Quality 15, 1-17.
Booth, D.A., & Freeman, R.P.J. (1993). Discriminative measurement of feature integration in object recognition. Acta Psychologica 84, 1-16.
Booth, D.A. (1994). Recognition of objects by physical attributes. Continuing Commentary on: G.R. Lockhead. Psychophysical scaling: judgments of attributes or objects?. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 17, 759-760.
Booth, D.A. (1994). Flavour quality as cognitive psychology: the applied science of mental mechanisms relating flavour descriptions to chemical and physical stimulation patterns. Food Quality and Preference 5, 41-54.
Booth, D.A. (1994). Psychology of nutrition. London: Taylor & Francis / Hove: Psychology Press.
Booth, D.A., Freeman, R.P.J., & Kendal-Reed, M.S. (1995). Recognition of aromas by subconscious cognitive integration of receptor patterns. In M. Rothe & H.-P. Kruse (Eds.), Aroma: perception, formation, evaluation, pp. 101-116. Potsdam: Deutsches Institut fur Ernahrungsforschung.
Santos, M.L.S., & Booth, D.A. (1996). Influences on meat avoidance among British students. Appetite 27, 197-205.
Booth, D.A. (1996). Measurement of hunger and satiety for long-term weight control. In A. Angel, G.H. Anderson, C. Bouchard, D. Lau, L. Leiter & R. Mendelson (Eds.), Progress in obesity research: 7, pp. 355-358. London: John Libbey.
Booth, D.A. (1998). Promoting culture supportive of the least fattening patterns of eating, drinking and physical activity. [Prevention of Obesity: Berzelius Symposium and 8th International Congress of Obesity Satellite] Appetite 31, 417-420.
Knibb, R., Booth, D.A., Armstrong, A., Platts, R., Macdonald, A. & Booth, I.W. (1999). Episodic and semantic memory in reports of food intolerance. Applied Cognitive Psychology 13, 451-464.
Booth, D.A., & Thibault, L. (1999). Macronutrient-specific hungers and satieties and their neural bases, learnt from pre- and post-ingestional effects of eating particular foodstuffs. In H.-R. Berthoud & R.J. Seeley (Eds.), Neural and metabolic control of macronutrient intake, pp. 61-91. Boca Raton, FL: CRC Press.
Booth, D.A. (1999). Optimisation of products' sensory and conceptual features for diverse consumers and uses. Trends in food science and technology (Proceedings of 4th International Food Convention, IFCON 98), pp. 475-486. Mysore: AFST(I)/CFTRI. ISBN 81-900556-0-7
Knibb, R.C., Armstrong, A.M., Booth, D.A., Platts, R.G., Booth, I.W., & Macdonald, A. (1999). Psychological characteristics of people with perceived food intolerance in a community sample. Journal of Psychosomatic Research 47, 545-554.
Booth, D.A., & Platts, R.G. (2000). Tool for assessing and reducing an individual's fat intake. Appetite 34, 107-108.
Armstrong, A.M., MacDonald, A., Booth, I.W., Platts, R.G., Knibb, R.C., & Booth, D.A. (2000). Errors in memory for dietary intake and their reduction. Applied Cognitive Psychology 14, 183-191.
Gibson, E.L., & Booth, D.A. (2000). Food-conditioned odour rejection in the late stages of the meal, mediating learnt control of meal volume by after-effects of food consumption. Appetite 34, 295-303.
Knibb, R.C., Booth, D.A., Platts, R., Armstrong, A., Booth, I.W., & Macdonald, A. (2000). Consequences of perceived food intolerance for welfare, lifestyle and food choice practices, in a community sample. Psychology, Health & Medicine, 5, 419-430.
Booth, D.A., & Knibb, R.C. (2000). What's the evidence that your problem comes from that food? Food Allergy and Intolerance 1, 191-200.
Knibb, R.C., Smith, D.M., Booth, D.A., Armstrong, A.M., Platts, R.G., Macdonald, A., & Booth, I.W. (2001). No unique role of nausea attributed to eating a food in the recalled acquisition of sensory aversion to that food. Appetite 36, 225-234.
White, J.A., Mok, E., Thibault, L., & Booth, D.A. (2001). Acquisition of texture-cued fasting-anticipatory meal-size change in rats with adequate energy intake. Appetite 37, 103-109.
Guss, J.L., Kissileff, H.R., Walsh, B.T., & Booth, D.A. (2001). Words used by patients with bulimia nervosa and healthy controls to express sensations associated with different types of meal. Appetite 37, 141.
Booth, D.A. (2002). Nutrients epidemiology or healthy dietary practices? [Comment on C.S. Wilson, Reasons for eating: personal experiences in nutrition and anthropology] Appetite 38, 69-70.
Lwin, C.T.-T., Bishay, M., Platts, R.G., Booth, D.A., & Bowman, S.J. (2003). The assessment of fatigue in primary Sj'gren's syndrome. Scandinavian Journal of Rheumatology 32, 1-5.
Bowman, S.J., Booth, D.A., Platts, R.G., Field, A., Rostron, J., & the UK Sjogren's Interest Group (2003). Validation of the Sicca Symptoms Inventory for clinical studies of Sjogren's Syndrome. Journal of Rheumatology 30, 1259-1266.
Booth, D.A., Mobini, S., Earl, T., & Wainwright, C.J. (2003). Consumer-specified instrumental quality of short-dough cookie texture using penetrometry and break force. Journal of Food Science: Sensory and Nutritive Qualities of Food 68 (1), 382-387.
Booth, D.A., Earl, T., & Mobini, S. (2003). Perceptual channels for the texture of a food. Appetite 40, 69-76.
Chamontin, A., Pretzer, G., & Booth, D.A. (2003). Ambiguity of snack in British usage. Appetite 41, 21-29.
Booth, D.A., Mobini, S., Earl, T., & Wainwright, C.J. (2003). Market-optimum instrumental values from individual consumers discriminations of standard sensory quality of the texture of short-dough biscuits. Journal of Food Quality 26(5), 425-439.
Booth, D.A. (2003). Phenomenology is art, not psychological or neural science. [Comment on S. Lehar, Gestalt isomorphism and the primacy of subjective conscious experience: a Gestalt Bubble model] Behavioral and Brain Sciences 26, 408-409. [Plus unpublished MS: Comment + Lehar's reply + DAB riposte]
Treherne, G.J., Lyons, A.C., Booth, D.A., Mason, S.R., & Kitas, G.D. (2004). Reactions to disability in patients with early versus established rheumatoid arthritis. Scandinavian Journal of Rheumatology 33, 30-38.
Bowman, S.J., Booth, D.A., Platts, R.G., & the UK Sjogren's Interest Group (2004). Questionnaire assessment of fatigue and general discomfort in primary Sjogren's syndrome. Rheumatology 43, 758-764.
Bowman, S.J., Booth, .D.A, Platts, R.G., & the UK Sjogren's Interest Group (2004). Measurement of fatigue and discomfort in primary Sjogren's syndrome using a new questionnaire tool. Rheumatology 43, 758-764.
Booth, D.A., Blair, A.J., Lewis, V.J., & Baek, S.H. (2004). Patterns of eating and movement that best maintain reduction in overweight. Appetite 43, 277-283
Booth, D.A. (2004). How observations on oneself can be scientific. [Comment on S. Roberts, Self-experimentation as a source of new ideas: ten examples about sleep, mood, health, and weight] Behavioral and Brain Sciences 27, 262-263
Treharne, G.J., Kitas, G.D., Lyons, A.C., & Booth, D.A. (2005). Well-being in rheumatoid arthritis: the effects of disease duration and psychosocial factors. Journal of Health Psychology 10, 457-474.
Treharne, G.J., Hale, E.D., Lyons, A.C., Booth, D.A., Banks, M.J., Erb, N., Mitton, D.L., & Kitas, G.D. (2005). Cardiovascular disease and psychological morbidity among rheumatoid arthritis patients. Rheumatology 44, 241-246
Goodchild, C.E., Platts, R.G., Treharne, G.J., & Booth, D.A. (2005). Excessive negative affect and deficient positive affect in anxiety and depression: balancing the valences in the Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale (HADS). Health Psychology Update 14(2), 45-50.
Booth, D.A. (2005). Perceiving the texture of a food: biomechanical and cognitive mechanisms and their measurement. In E. Dickinson (Ed.), Food colloids: interactions, microstructure and processing, pp. 339-355. Cambridge: Royal Society of Chemistry.
Richardson-Harman, N.J., & Booth, D.A. (2006). Do you like the sight or the feel of milk in coffee? Ecology and effortful attention in differential acuity and preference for sensed effects of milk substitute in vended coffee. Appetite 46, 130-136.
Booth, D.A. (2006). Money as tool, money as resource: biology of the attractions of items for their own sake. Comment on S.E.G. Lea & P. Webley, Money as tool, money as drug: biological psychology of a strong incentive. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 29, 180-181.
Thibault, L., & Booth, D.A. (2006). Reinforcement of flavour- specific anticipatory hunger by lack of either protein or carbohydrate. Physiology and Behavior 88, 201-210.
Booth, D.A., Treharne, G.J., Kitas, G.D., & Kumar, S. (2007). Avoidance of unhealthy fattening: a longstanding proposal. Appetite 48, 129-134.
The Research group in the School of Psychology's Groupings:Empathy
The Research group in the School of Psychology's Groupings:Perceptual Systems
The Research group in the School of Psychology's Groupings:Health Psychology
The enABLE approach to research and services: http://www.what-works-in-your-circs.org
The research journal Appetite - research on eating & drinking: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/appe
