[Assessment of difficulties in mental representation of visual stimuli in anorexic patients]

The aim of this research is to assess the mental representation associated to visual stimuli for anorexic patients. Two studies are described. The first one is a systematic observation of food representation for five patients within a 3-month period. The disruptive factors, mainly related to food visual aspect decrease with time. Consequently, a second experiment was carried out. Two groups were compared as far as the food mental representation related to visual food stimuli is concerned: a group of anorexic patients and a group of control subjects selected according to sex, age, and educational standard. The results show the existence of habituation process as there is a decrease of disruptions concerning the mental representation of food color, texture and shape. This result must be confirmed on a larger sample.