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Porto, Portugal | September 20-22, 2012
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WEIGHT-RELATED COGNITIVE DISTORTIONS:
SPECIFICITY TO EATING PATHOLOGY
Jennifer S Coelho
1,2
, Celine Baeyens
3
, Christine Purdon
4
,
Martine Bouvard
5
1
Douglas Institute, Verdun, QC, Canada,
2
McGill University,
Montreal, QC, Canada,
3
Pierre Mendes France University,
Grenoble, France,
4
University of Waterloo, Waterloo, ON,
Canada,
5
University of Savoie, Chambery, France
Purpose.
Individuals with eating disorders (ED) exhibit high
levels of obsessional beliefs, and some researchers have
suggested that ED and obsessive-compulsive disorder
(OCD) share similar etiologies. However, the specificity of
certain cognitive distortions (i.e., thought-shape fusion; TSF)
to eating pathology has not been examined. Similarly, it is
unclear whether there are overlapping cognitive processes
in obesity and eating disorders. Two experimental studies
were conducted to investigate the specificity of TSF.
Method.
The first study examined the effects of TSF induction in
women with ED (n = 33), OCD (n = 24) and controls (n = 26).
The second study examined the effects of a TSF induction
in obese (n = 44) and normal-weight (n = 38) adolescents.
Results.
Study 1 demonstrated that individuals with ED were
more susceptible to TSF than were controls and women
with OCD. In fact, women with OCD were somewhat less
susceptible to TSF than were controls. Study 2 demonstrated
that adolescents who were obese were less susceptible
to TSF inductions than were normal-weight adolescents.
Furthermore, eating pathology emerged as the only significant
predictor of TSF (depression, obesity status, and gender
did not predict TSF).
Conclusions.
The results suggest that
TSF is specific to ED, and that individuals who are obese, or
have other psychopathology (i.e., OCD) are less susceptible
to this weight-related distortion. Clinical implications of these
findings will be discussed.
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Specificity of the failure to inhibit responses
in overweight children
Chantal Nederkoorn
Maastricht University, Maastricht, Netherlands
Introduction: Poor response inhibition has been associated
with obesity, excessive food intake, and other consumptive
behaviours, including alcohol use. However, the correlation
between obesity and addictive behaviours like alcoholism
is low: people who are obese appear to have a specific
problem in restraining food intake. This would imply that
although those who are obese have difficulties in inhibiting
their responses in general, they might experience even
larger difficulties in inhibiting responses towards food. The
present study tested whether children who are overweight
experience more difficulties in inhibiting responses towards
palatable food pictures, compared to attractive non-food
pictures, like toys. Method: Eighty-nine children (ages 7-9,
40 boys, 49 girls) were tested with the stop signal task, in
which responses towards food pictures or toy pictures had
to be inhibited. Results showed that the children who were
overweight were less effective in inhibiting their responses
towards food cues compared to those who were lean.
No differences between the groups were found in the toy
condition. Conclusion: Children who are overweight appear to
have a specific problem in inhibiting responses towards food
cues. This might explain the increased overeating to food
cues, as reported in the literature.
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THE IMPACT OF ANOREXIA NERVOSA ON BRAIN
DEVELOPMENT: A NEUROPSYCHOLOGICAL STUDY
Elena Tenconi, Daniela Degortes, Francesca Titton, Giada
Cipollone, Paolo Santonastaso, Angela Favaro
University of Padova, Padova, Italy
Anorexia nervosa (AN) patients display an impairment
of cognitive flexibility and central coherence, but it is
unclear how much these problems are to be considered
predisposing factors or a consequence of the illness. Since
during adolescence the process of neurodevelopment is not
completed, it is possible that AN might interfere with final
stages of brain maturation. The aim of the study is to explore
the effects of age on the neuropsychological performance of
a group of healthy women (n=200) and a group of patients
with lifetime AN (n=220). The Wisconsin Card Sorting
Task, the Rey-Osterrieth Complex Figure Task, and other
measures of cognitive functioning will be used as a proxy
of brain development to investigate how much the onset
of AN does interfere with normal maturation trajectories.
In healthy women, inflexibility shows a U-shaped curve
(higher in adolescence and after 35-38 years) and central
coherence tends to slowly increase along with age. In AN,
normal trajectories are flattened and no correlation with age
emerged. In addition, visual memory shows a more rapid
impairment with age in comparison to controls. The role of
age at onset, duration of illness and BMI in the AN sample will
be examined during the presentation. The onset of AN seems
to interfere with normal brain developmental trajectories. This
might be the reason why impairments of cognitive flexibility,
central coherence and visual memory are evident only in
adult patients.
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PRELIMINARY INVESTIGATION OF THE EMOTION
CONFLICT TASK IN BINGE EATING DISORDER
Athena H Robinson, Amit Etkin
Stanford University, Palo Alto, CA, USA
Introduction: Although clinical observation and self-report
data suggest that abnormalities in emotion regulation
may precipitate binge eating episodes in Binge Eating
Disorder (BED), implicit emotion regulation in BED is not
well understood. The Emotion Conflict Task (ECT) is a
behavioral task assessing implicit emotion regulation which
has been well validated in other forms of psychopathology,
but not yet tested among individuals with BED. Method: The
present study compared ECT response patterns between
adults meeting DSM V criteria for BED (n=25; mean(sd)
age=44.16(15.27); 80% women) and comparison (with no
Axis I, including eating disorder, diagnoses) controls (n=22;
age=40.50(15.97); 73% women).
Results: There were no significant differences between
BED and control subjects in emotional conflict regulation.
The Difficulties in Emotion Regulation Scale (DERS) total
score was significantly associated with emotional conflict
regulation among BED subjects only (p=.003; R²=.30),
with higher DERS indicating poorer conflict regulation.
BED subjects regulated emotionally congruent (i.e., no
conflict) stimuli significantly better than controls (p=.022).
Conclusion: BED subjects may have a greater sensitivity
to ECT emotional stimuli. Better understanding of emotion
regulation, particularly a type occurring outside of awareness,
may inform conceptualizations of and development of novel
treatments for BED. Suggestions for augmenting future use of
ECT within BED will be discussed.
PLENARY/ORAL ABSTRACTS