A Correlational Investigation of the Relationships Among Nutrition-Related Attitudes and Behavior, Body Mass, and Learning and Verbal Memory Performance in College Students

The present study investigated the potential relationship between eating attitudes, nutritional knowledge and learning and memory among a sample of college students. Participants completed self-report measures of nutrition-related behavior, knowledge and attitudes. The California Verbal Learning Test (CVLT-2) was used to assess verbal learning and memory performance. Results indicated that poor nutrition-related behavior tended to interfere with learning, as assessed by parametric correlation analyses. Problematic eating behaviors such as excessive dieting and oral control were associated with less efficient verbal learning. Although the relationship between participants’ total learning scores and overall index of nutrition did not reach statistical significance, the findings indicate that the intermediary components of learning are related to self-report measures of eating attitudes and nutritional knowledge. The implications of these findings along with future directions are discussed.