A systematic review and meta-analysis of cognitive bias to food stimuli in people with disordered eating behaviour.
OBJECTIVE
Maladaptive cognitions about food, weight and shape bias attention, memory and judgment and may be linked to disordered eating behaviour. This paper reviews information processing of food stimuli (words, pictures) in people with eating disorders (ED).


METHODS
PubMed, Ovid, ScienceDirect, PsychInfo, Web of Science, Cochrane Library and Google Scholar were searched to December 2009. 63 studies measured attention, memory and judgment bias towards food stimuli in women with ED.


RESULTS
Stroop tasks had sufficient sample size for a meta-analyses and effects ranged from small to medium. Other studies of attention bias had variable effects (e.g. the Dot-Probe task, distracter tasks and Startle Eyeblink Modulation). A meta-analysis of memory bias studies in ED and RE yielded insignificant effect. Effect sizes for judgment bias ranged from negligible to large.


CONCLUSIONS
People with ED have greater attentional bias to food stimuli than healthy controls (HC). Evidence for a memory and judgment bias in ED is limited.
Eating Disorders Unit, Institute of Psychiatry, King's College, London, UK. Samantha.brooks@kcl.ac.uk
Samantha
S
Brooks
Alexis
A
Prince
Daniel
D
Stahl
Iain C
IC
Campbell
Janet
J
Treasure
D001288:Attention / Q000502:physiology*; D001068:Feeding and Eating Disorders / Q000523:psychology*; D005260:Female; D005502:Food; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D009483:Neuropsychological Tests; D010775:Photic Stimulation