David A. Booth

For the NHL ice hockey player, see David Booth (ice hockey).

David A. Booth
Born	1 August 1938 England
Nationality	British
Fields	Psychology
Institutions	University of Birmingham
Alma mater	University of Oxford
Known for	individual psychology, associative learning of appetites (conditioned satiety), neuroscience of motivation, weight control, retail product choices (consumer behaviour)

David Booth^[1] investigates the ways in which an individual's life works. His research and teaching centre on the processes in the mind that fit acts and reactions of human beings and animals to the passing situation.

Educational roots

At the age of 10, David Booth was given the book Vital Things for Lively Youngsters (1937) by T.J.S.Rowland and L.G.Smith, encouraging experimental thinking about how the human body works: its four parts concerned seeing, bacteria, nutrition and, more briefly, health in body and mind! The use of nuclear fission in 1945 stimulated his interest in atomic theory. That led him to the school stream of chemistry, physics and maths, then choice of chemistry at university, learning most from chemical physics. Complementing such specialisation was encouragement to understand for himself the breadth of view of human life in the Judeo-Christian scriptures. From the traditional opening of these writings, the human person is regarded as a unity of the social, material, rational and emotional.^[2] This outlook swayed him from science of the inanimate towards the biochemistry of the body and the brain, and such interests continue. More radically, another student on a philosophy and psychology degree introduced him to the 1930s Cambridge revolutions in analysis of the functioning of language^[3] and experimentally designed investigation of mental performance.^[4] Each discipline was readily recognised from that religious background as the cutting edge of empirical study of human nature. In due time, a re-discovery of a law of choice times in the Psychology practical exam for a second bachelors degree, a realisation that the scientist was too engrained ever to become a creative philosopher, and the experience of testing (unproductively) a concept of intelligence in children with learning difficulties, all pointed him towards an academic psychology that encompasses both the physical and the social worlds, as well as the conscious and unconscious mind.

Academic career

David Booth works fulltime in research and research teaching as an honorary professor at the School of Psychology in the College of Life and Environmental Sciences of the University of Birmingham (UK). He has been Professor of Psychology, earlier Reader in Physiological Psychology, Senior Lecturer and initially Lecturer in that department since 1972, with research staff funded by MRC, HEC, SERC, MAFF, AFRC and BBSRC. In 1966-72, he was Research Fellow in the Laboratory of Experimental Psychology, School of Biological Sciences, University of Sussex, on his own funds from SERC, MRC and MHRF. He was elected to the Experimental Psychology Society in 1967. On joining the British Psychological Society in 1983, he was made a Fellow and later become Chartered Psychologist, a founding member of the Division of Health Psychology and professionally practising member of the Division for Teachers and Researchers in Psychology, ending as chair. His first employment within Psychology was as a postdoc at the Yale University Graduate School in 1964-6, initiating work on metabolic biochemistry and neuropharmacology in the laboratories of Neal E. Miller on his funds from NIH. From 1959 to 1964 he was employed as a graduate research worker in Henry McIlwain's Department of Neurochemistry at the Institute of Psychiatry (and briefly the Institute of Neurology) in the University of London. He registered for two years for a BA in Philosophy and Psychology (with Sociology option) at Birkbeck College, University of London, graduating with First Class Honours in 1962. After 3 years of registered study for a PhD in Biochemistry, he graduated by thesis in 1964. He went up to Corpus Christi College, Oxford, in 1955 to read Chemistry with Biochemistry, following secondary education at Dulwich College.

Key contributions

The first major body of work by David Booth refuted the theory that dual centres of the hypothalamus control eating, the lateral hypothalamus for hunger ^[5] and the ventromedial hypothalamus for satiety ^[6] and began to replace it with an inclusive and now dominant theory of the control of food choice and intake through learnt connections distributed around the brain^[7]. With colleagues making early uses of computers to implement scientific theory, he built the first and still the only simulation of the physiological and learning mechanisms influencing eating patterns in people and laboratory animals^[8]. This theory can be extended to include cultural and interpersonal influences^[9].

Booth's evidence with colleagues is that the regulation of metabolic states of the body through learnt eating can extend to nutrient-specific selection among foods. A flavoured food becomes more highly preferred when protein is lacking in the most recent meal, if protein in that distinctive food had previously repaired a lack of protein in people^[10] and in rats^[11]. People may have a similar learnt specific appetite for energy, whether from carbohydrate or fat (or indeed protein); Booth has suggested the same for water^[12] but not for salt, despite the lack of the innate appetite for sodium ions seen in several other species^[13].

One of Booth's major contributions is a theory that influences are at their strongest when combined at their personally learnt levels^[14], the individual's 'norm' for the situation^[15]. The theory was epitomised by the description of the phenomenon and coining of the term conditioned satiety^[16]. Booth also became well known for his criticisms of concepts of fixed palatabilities and satieties^[17], confusion between preference and pleasure^[18], and the failure of weight-loss products and hormone analogues^[19]. He considered it scientifically incoherent to claim that a medication or food constituent had a specifiable satiating power and an effect in itself on weight. He joined forces with the human rights activist Phil Booth^[20] to advocate culturally and biologically realistic education in personal tailoring of changes in specific patterns of behaviour in order to slow the increase in prevalence of obesity^[21].

Booth's research from the start was distinctive in its attention to the performance of each individual in the situation investigated. This approach culminated in the construction from classic ideas and findings in psychology of a set of determinate mechanisms by which, on the basis of previous experience, an individual decides what to do as circumstances change ^[22]. The theory encompasses the culture's perceived and expressed symbols as well as material stimulation of the senses and movements of the muscles. Hence it is being extended to facial signals of emotion, empathy for perceived personal need, and marketed concepts in interaction with products' sensed material characteristics^[23].

References

1. ^ Booth's personal page at the University of Birmingham ([1])
2. ^ Book of Genesis, chapters 1-4.
3. ^ L. Wittgenstein Philosophical Investigations 1953, Blackwells, Oxford (published posthumously).
4. ^ F.C. Bartlett Remembering 1932, CUP, Cambridge.
5. ^ Booth DA. Localization of the adrenergic feeding system in the rat diencephalon. Science 1967;158:515‑517. Matthews JW, Booth DA, Stolerman IP. Factors influencing feeding elicited by intracranial noradrenaline in rats. Brain Res. 1978;141;119‑128.
6. ^ Booth DA, Toates FM, Platt SV. Control system for hunger and its implications in animals and man, in D Novin, W Wyrwicka, GA Bray (eds) Hunger 1976; New York: Raven Press:127‑142. Duggan JP, Booth DA. Obesity, overeating and rapid gastric emptying in rats with ventromedial hypothalamic lesions. Science 1986;231:609‑611.
7. ^ Booth DA. Vertebrate brain ribonucleic acids and memory retention. Psychol. Bull. 1967;68;149‑177.
8. ^ Toates FM, Booth DA. Control of food intake by energy supply. Nature 1974;251;710‑711. Booth DA, Mather P. Prototype model of human feeding, growth and obesity, in DA Booth (ed) Hunger models 1978;London: Academic Press 279‑322.
9. ^ Booth DA. A simulation model of psychobiosocial theory of human food-intake controls. Int. J. Vitamin Nutr. Res. 1988;58:55-69. Booth DA. Physiological regulation through learnt control of appetites by contingencies among signals from external and internal environments. Appetite 2008;51:433-441.
10. ^ Gibson EL, Wainwright CJ, Booth DA. Disguised protein in lunch after low-protein breakfast conditions food-flavor preferences dependent on recent lack of protein intake. Physiol. Behav. 1995;58:363-371.
11. ^ Baker BJ, Booth DA, Duggan JP, Gibson EL. Protein appetite demonstrated: learned specificity of protein‑cue preference to protein need in adult rats. Nutr. Res. 1987;7:481-487.
12. ^ Booth DA. Influences on human drinking behaviour, in DJ Ramsay, DA Booth (eds) Thirst: physiological and psychological aspects 1991; London: Springer-Verlag:52-72.
13. ^ Harris G, Thomas A, Booth DA. Development of salt taste preference in infancy. Dev. Psychol. 1991;26:534-538. Conner MT, Booth DA, Clifton VJ, Griffiths RP. Individualized optimization of the salt content of white bread for acceptability. J. Food Sci. 1988;53:549-554.
14. ^ Booth DA. Food conditioned eating preferences and aversions with interoceptive elements: [learnt] appetites and satieties. Ann NY Acad Sci. 1985;443:22-37.
15. ^ Booth DA, Freeman RPJ. Discriminative feature integration by individuals. Acta Psychol. 1993; 84(1): 1-16.
16. ^ Booth DA. Conditioned satiety in the rat. J Comp Physiol Psychol. 1972; 81(3): 457-71.
17. ^ Booth DA. How not to think about immediate dietary and postingestional influences on appetites and satieties. Appetite 1990;14:171-9.
18. ^ Booth DA, Higgs S. Learned liking versus inborn delight. Can sweetness give sensual pleasure or is it just motivating? Psychol Sci 2010; 21:1656-63.
19. ^ Booth DA, Nouwen A. Satiety. No way to slim. Appetite 2010;55(3):718-21.
20. ^ Phil Booth (UK) professional profile http://uk.linkedin.com/in/philboothuk
21. ^ Booth DA, Booth P. Targeting cultural changes supportive of the healthiest lifestyle patterns. A biosocial evidence-base for prevention of obesity. Appetite 2011;56:210-221.
22. ^ Booth DA, Freeman RPJ. Discriminative feature integration by individuals. Acta Psychol. 1993; 84(1): 1-16. Booth DA, Sharpe O, Freeman RPJ, Conner MT. Insight into sight, taste, smell, touch and hearing in perception of food. Seeing Perceiv. 2011; in press.
23. ^ Freeman RPJ, Booth DA. Users of ‘diet’ drinks who think that sweetness is calories. Appetite 2010;55:152-155.

Persondata
Name	Booth, David Allenby
Alternative names	Booth, David
Short description	Prof. Psychology, U. Birmingham UK
Date of birth	1 August 1938
Place of birth	England
Date of death
Place of death