Cognitive deficits and biases for food and body in bulimia: investigation using an affective shifting task

Studies suggest that attentional deficits and biases play a role in the development and maintenance of eating disorders. Many of these studies have methodological limitations and their results are difficult to interpret. In this study, we examine attentional deficits and biases in bulimia.

18 bulimic participants and 18 controls performed an adaptation of the go/no-go affective shifting task. That task allows the investigation of attention, inhibitory control and mental flexibility for stimuli related to the body and food.

Bulimic participants tended to react faster than controls in the go/no-go affective task. They also had poorer discrimination ability than controls and showed inhibition problems, particularly when the targets were related to food. The magnitude of these effects ranged from moderate to large. No difference between groups was found concerning mental flexibility.

These results suggest that bulimics present cognitive deficits and are more impulsive, especially with food-related stimuli. These cognitive deficits and biases may be at least partially responsible for the development and maintenance of bulimia.