Gating of attention towards food stimuli in binge eating disorder. (1st December 2015)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Schmitz, Florian; Naumann, Eva; Biehl, Stefanie; Svaldi, Jennifer
• Is Part Of: Appetite. Volume 95(2015)
• Page Start: 368
• Page End: 374
• Publication Date: 2015-12-01
• Subjects: Binge eating disorder -- Attention gating -- Stimulus engagement -- Stimulus disengagement -- Attentional bias; Food habits -- Periodicals; Appetite -- Periodicals; Appetite disorders -- Periodicals; Electronic journals; 306.4613
• DOI: 10.1016/j.appet.2015.07.023
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0195-6663

Abstract

Abstract: Cognitive models of eating disorders propose that attentional biases for disorder-relevant stimuli contribute to eating disorder pathology. Empirical evidence of a contribution of attentional biases for binge eating disorder (BED) is still scarce. The aim of the present study was to assess attention engagement towards, and disengagement from, food stimuli in overweight females with BED ( n = 25) and a group of overweight and obese women without BED (OW; n = 30). Participants completed a rapid serial visual presentation (RSVP) paradigm with food and neutral words as target stimuli. This task can be used to decompose an attentional bias for food stimuli into its stimulus engagement and stimulus disengagement components. Findings indicate that facilitated stimulus engagement for food stimuli over neutral stimuli was more pronounced in the BED group compared to the OW group. Conversely, there were no substantial disengagement effects in either group. Thereby, results support the idea that early attentional processes are biased in BED. Highlights: We tested attentional bias for food stimuli in binge eating patients. We found a facilitated engagement effect for food stimuli in patients with binge eating compared to controls. Neither group experienced substantial difficulty to disengage from food stimuli. Results support the idea that attentional engagement to food stimuli contributes to binge eating pathology.