Background and objectives

Individuals with disordered eating display heightened attentional biases towards food- and body-related stimuli. However, it is unknown whether these attentional biases reflect maladaptive thinking/eating pathology. We investigated the differences between maladaptive and adaptive ways of thinking about food by assessing food- and body-related attentional biases among individuals with disordered eating, participants with peanut allergies (i.e., individuals who think frequently about food in an adaptive manner), and healthy controls. We also examined the extent to which negative mood and rumination exacerbated attentional biases among those in these groups.

Method

Three hundred and twenty-one individuals with disordered eating (n = 139), peanut allergies (n = 60), and healthy controls (n = 122) completed food- and body-based Stroop tasks prior to and following a cognitive rumination task designed to increase negative mood.

Results

Individuals with disordered eating and individuals with peanut allergies had significantly worse performance on the food and body Stroop tasks relative to healthy controls at baseline (ps < .001). However, there were no perceived differences in performance by group following rumination.

Limitations

The cognitive rumination task heightened negative mood for those in the disordered eating group but not for those in the peanut allergy or healthy control groups.

Conclusions

Findings suggest that frequent thoughts involving food are associated with attentional biases towards food and body stimuli. This appears to be the case regardless of whether these frequent thoughts are due to disordered eating or to fear of an allergic reaction.

中文翻译：

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饮食失调与食物过敏个体对食物和身体刺激的注意偏向

背景和目标

饮食失调的人对食物和身体相关的刺激表现出更高的注意力偏差。然而，尚不清楚这些注意力偏差是否反映了适应不良的思维/饮食病理学。我们通过评估饮食失调的个体、花生过敏的参与者（即经常以适应性方式思考食物的个体）和健康个体之间与食物和身体相关的注意力偏差，调查了对食物的不适应和适应性思维方式之间的差异。控制。我们还检查了负面情绪和反刍在多大程度上加剧了这些群体中的注意力偏差。

方法

321 名饮食失调 ( n  = 139)、花生过敏 ( n  = 60) 和健康对照组 ( n  = 122) 的个体在设计的认知反刍任务之前和之后完成了基于食物和身体的 Stroop 任务增加消极情绪。

结果

与基线时的健康对照组相比，饮食失调的个体和花生过敏的个体在食物和身体 Stroop 任务中的表现明显较差（p s < .001）。然而，在反刍后，各组的表现没有明显差异。

限制

认知反刍任务增加了饮食失调组的负面情绪，但对花生过敏或健康对照组的人没有影响。

结论

研究结果表明，涉及食物的频繁想法与对食物和身体刺激的注意力偏差有关。无论这些频繁的想法是由于饮食失调还是由于对过敏反应的恐惧，情况似乎都是如此。