Selective processing of linguistic and pictorial food stimuli in females with anorexia and bulimia nervosa.
OBJECTIVE
This study investigated subjects with eating disorders' selective attention to linguistic and pictorial representations of food stimuli in a version of the Stroop color-naming task. If subjects with eating disorders' attention really are biased by food stimuli, one would expect equally delayed color-naming latencies to food pictures as previous studies have found to food words.


METHODS
Twenty females with eating disorders (anorexia nervosa, bulimia nervosa, or a combination of both) and 24 female controls identified the color of Stroop versions of linguistic and pictorial representations of color, food, emotional, and neutral stimuli.


RESULTS
The eating disorder group was slower than the controls in identifying the color of all words (including the food words) and the pictures depicting food stimuli (but not any of the other pictures). The eating disorder group was also slower in identifying the color of both food and emotional than neutral stimuli, both for the linguistic and pictorial stimuli.


CONCLUSIONS
These findings indicate that females with bulimia and anorexia nervosa's biased attention to food stimuli are not restricted to linguistic representations. The delayed responses to the emotional words and pictures suggest that processing of negative emotional stimuli, in addition to dysfunctional concerns about stimuli related to food and eating, is important in the maintenance of eating disorders.
Regional Competence Centre for Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, University of Bergen, P.O. Box 7800, 5020 Bergen, Norway. kjell.stormark@rbup.uib.no
Kjell Morten
KM
Stormark
Øivind
Ø
Torkildsen
D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D000856:Anorexia Nervosa / Q000175:diagnosis / Q000523:psychology*; D001288:Attention; D002032:Bulimia / Q000175:diagnosis / Q000523:psychology*; D003118:Color Perception; D003463:Cues; D004193:Discrimination Learning; D004644:Emotions; D005260:Female; D005502:Food; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D009664:Norway; D010364:Pattern Recognition, Visual; D011930:Reaction Time; D011932:Reading; D012016:Reference Values; D012660:Semantics