title: Social cognition in bulimia nervosa: a systematic review.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  Clinical accounts and previous evidence suggest that socio-emotional impairments may be present in people with bulimia nervosa (BN). The aim of this paper was to systematically review studies of social cognition, and to evaluate whether social cognitive deficits exist in BN.
  
  
  METHODS
  Keywords were identified using an existing model of social cognition (Green et al., 2007) [16], and used to search for relevant papers in three online databases. Records were then screened according to a priori inclusion/exclusion criteria.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Five papers reporting seven social cognition tasks were identified as pertinent to the review. All involved either theory of mind ability or emotional processing skills. Participants with BN had impaired performance on the Levels of Emotional Awareness Scale and showed greater attentional bias than controls on an emotional Stroop task. There were no overall group differences for any other tasks, although there were small differences for some specific test items.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Basic social cognition does not appear to be impaired in people with BN. Future research should make use of more complex, ecologically valid measures, and consider the relationship between task performance and everyday social functioning.
authors.affiliation: King's College London, Institute of Psychiatry, Section of Eating Disorders, PO 59, De Crespigny Park, SE5 8AF London, United Kingdom. hannah.dejong@kcl.ac.uk
authors.forename: H
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Dejong
authors.forename: F
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Van den Eynde
authors.forename: H
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Broadbent
authors.forename: M D
authors.initials: MD
authors.lastname: Kenyon
authors.forename: A
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Lavender
authors.forename: H
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Startup
authors.forename: U
authors.initials: U
authors.lastname: Schmidt
mesh_terms: D001288:Attention; D001364:Awareness; D052018:Bulimia Nervosa / Q000523:psychology*; D003071:Cognition; D004644:Emotions; D006801:Humans; D012919:Social Behavior; D012938:Social Perception; D056345:Theory of Mind