Verbal emotional expressiveness in women with eating disorders: recalling autobiographical memories

This study aimed to study autobiographical memories in women with eating disorders regarding emotional verbal expression, according to age. Our hypotheses are threefold: due to the emotional avoidance that occurs in women with eating disorders, in the younger ages, it was hypothesized that younger participants with anorexia and bulimia nervosa will present a lower number of emotional expressions in the descriptions of their memories than women without eating disorders; that older participants with anorexia and bulimia nervosa will present a greater number of negative verbal expressions in the reports of their memories than women without eating disorders, given the development of negative bias that occurs with age in women with eating disorders; and that women with eating disorders will use more words in a description of their sad memories than women without eating disorders because of the existence of negative bias.

With a sample of 90 women and combining age and the presence or absence of eating disorders, we formed four groups. The task that they had to perform was to recall a sad and a happy life event.

The younger women used more words than the older women to describe their memories, and women with eating disorders used more words in their descriptions of the sad memories. However, there were no differences in terms of the number of positive and negative expressions.

Women with eating disorders exhibit higher levels of cognitive reappraisal and thus use more positive expressions and fewer negative expressions.

Level V, Descriptive study.