Developmental onset of eating related color-naming interference

The current study was an investigation into the possible developmental aspects of the "Eating Stroop" effect, as produced by non-eating disordered subjects. The subject pool comprised male and female subjects, ranging in age from 9 to 14 years. Their task was to color-name a series of Stroop arrays, comprising food-related words, body shape-related words, and two sets of neutral matched control words. It was found that there were significant performance decrements for both food and shape-related words with the 14-year-old girls. The results indicated a possible color-naming decrement with food-related words for the 11-year-old girls, but not shape words. No color-naming decrements were found with the 9-year-old group, or the male subjects. The results are interpreted in terms of cultural pressures on women to diet to attain an "ideal" body shape and the different developmental stages at which such pressures exert themselves.