Eating Disorder - Attentional Bias Compared To Control Groups

Attentional Bias Compared To Control Groups

One of the studies that concentrated on testing if attentional bias has an effect on eating disorders is one performed by Shafran, Lee, Cooper, Palmer and Fairburn (2007). The hypothesis for this experiment was that attentional biases will be more prevalent for eating weight and shape in patients who suffered from an eating disorder than in the control groups. The participants were five groups of volunteers. The first group consisted of 23 females with eating disorders (anorexia, bulimia, and eating disorders not otherwise specified.) The control groups consisted of volunteers with low, moderate, and high levels of interest in their size and one group of females who had a high level of anxiety. These participants were instructed to rate each picture by their emotional response to the picture as either “good” “bad” or “neutral.” Their emotional response to the picture was operationalized by how the picture made them feel. If the person in the picture seemed to be portraying bad eating habits, such as eating high calorie food or binge eating or a thicker body picture, they would consider it “bad”. If the person in the picture was portraying healthy eating tips and slim bodies the picture was considered “good” and if the person did not feel either way about the picture, or it consisted of body parts not associated with weight it was considered “neutral. In this study the experimenters showed participants four different groups of pictures. The first three groups were pictures portraying good, bad and neutral pictures in relation to eating, weight and shape. The fourth group was the control group, showing pictures of animals. There were four separate measures for this experiment. They involved the Eating Disorder Examination, The Beck Depression Inventory II, BAI and their Body Mass Index. The Eating Disorder Examination rated the behavioral functions of eating disorders. Some of these functions are episodes of binge eating, restriction of food, and vomiting. It also creates subscales that measure concern for the weight, shape and eating habits. The Beck Depression Inventory II assess if the participant suffers from depression or symptoms of depression. The BAI helps rate the person’s anxiety levels, and the person’s Body Mass Index indicates how much body fat a person has based off of their height and weight. For statistical purposes experimenters performed an ANOVA for compare the five different variables and ANCOVA to account for the BMI and the Depression scores. The results indicate that there was a significant bias for the “good” body image pictures shown by patients with an eating disorder. The participants with an eating disorder took longer to decide if the positive pictures were “good” than it took them to decide if the negative pictures were “bad”. The results show that there was no differences for the neutral and shapes groups across the three different conditions. The hypothesis for this experiment was supported and shows that although females in the different level of anxiety control group all share the same attentional biases, females with eating disorders suffer from different attentional baises. The data show that participants with eating disorders responded quicker to the probe when it showed a negative eating picture, than when it showed a positive eating picture. This study tested attentional bias in several different types of eating disorders. Future studies could expand upon this and concentrate on one specific type of eating disorder and how attentional bias affects that disorder.