The inability to ignore: distractibility in women with restricting anorexia nervosa.
BACKGROUND
Attentional difficulties reported in individuals with anorexia nervosa (AN) may be due to preferential processing of disease-salient stimuli at a pre-attentive or at a conscious level or to a general problem in attention. Attentional difficulties may be associated with duration of illness.


METHODS
Female participants with AN (restricting subtype; n=24) and healthy comparison women (n=24) were randomly allocated to subliminal or supraliminal exposure to visual stimuli (food, neutral and aversive images) while performing the 1-back and 2-back working-memory tasks.


RESULTS
Participants with AN made fewer errors than the healthy comparison group in the subliminal condition but significantly more errors in the supraliminal condition [condition x group interaction, F(1, 44)=6.82, p<0.01]: this was irrespective of stimulus type (food, neutral and aversive) and task (1-back or 2-back). The total number of errors made correlated positively with the duration of the AN for both the 1-back task (rs=0.46, p<0.05) and for the 2-back task (rs=0.53, p<0.01).


CONCLUSIONS
Decreased ability to concentrate in the presence of explicit distracters is a feature of AN and is associated with longer duration of illness. This phenomenon could be addressed in psychological interventions.
Dickson
H
H
Section of Eating Disorders, Psychological Medicine, Institute of Psychiatry, King's College London, De Crespigny Park, London SE5 8AF, UK. h.dickson@iop.kcl.ac.uk
Brooks
S
S
Uher
R
R
Tchanturia
K
K
Treasure
J
J
Campbell
I C
IC
D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D000856:Anorexia Nervosa / Q000523:psychology*; D001288:Attention; D003071:Cognition; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008875:Middle Aged