Self-referential processing in anorexia nervosa

OBJECTIVE

Anorexia nervosa (AN) is a serious psychiatric illness associated with significant medical and psychiatric comorbidity and impairment. Theoretical models of AN and self-report studies suggest that negative self-evaluation (i.e., low self-esteem) is related to the development and maintenance of AN. The goal of this study was to extend findings from self-report methodology using a neurocognitive task that probes self-evaluation implicitly and explicitly.

METHOD

We compared female adolescent and adult patients with AN (n = 35) and healthy controls (HC, n = 38) on explicit (i.e., endorsement of words as self-relevant), implicit (recall, recognition, reaction time), and composite (i.e., valence index, bias score, drift rates) indices of self-evaluation. We applied a drift-diffusion model to compute the drift rates, reflecting participants' decision-making process as to whether words were self-relevant. The association between self-evaluation indices and eating disorder severity was examined.

RESULTS

There were significant Group × Condition interaction effects for all explicit and implicit measures (all p's ≤ .01), where the AN group endorsed, recalled, and recognized more negative relative to positive words than HC. The AN group had more negative valence index and bias scores, and slower drift rate away from negative words, reflecting more negative self-evaluation. The finding for recall was attenuated when individuals with depression were excluded. Measures of self-evaluation bias were not related to eating disorder severity.

DISCUSSION

Using a neurocognitive approach that includes explicit and implicit indices of bias, results suggest that patients with AN have more negative self-evaluation. Due to the cross-sectional design, additional studies are needed to further evaluate directionality.

PUBLIC SIGNIFICANCE

Negative self-evaluation/low self-esteem is thought to contribute to eating disorder symptoms. Findings of this study using a neurocognitive task to probe self-evaluation suggested that individuals with anorexia nervosa have more negative self-evaluation, reflected by endorsing and remembering more negative (than positive) words compared to healthy controls, and doing so faster. Targeting the construct of negative self-evaluation in treatment of AN may be warranted.

Danish 20-month-olds' recognition of familiar words with and without consonant and vowel mispronunciations

Although several studies initially supported the proposal by Nespor et al. (Nespor, Marina, Marcela Peña & Jacques Mehler. 2003. On the different roles of vowels and consonants in speech processing and language acquisition. Lingue e Linguaggio 2. 221-247) that consonants are more informative than vowels in lexical processing, a more complex picture has emerged from recent research. Current evidence suggests that infants initially show a vowel bias in lexical processing and later transition to a consonant bias, possibly depending on the characteristics of the ambient language. Danish infants have shown a vowel bias in word learning at 20 months-an age at which infants learning French or Italian no longer show a vowel bias but rather a consonant bias, and infants learning English show no bias. The present study tested whether Danish 20-month-olds also have a vowel bias when recognizing familiar words. Specifically, using the Intermodal Preferential Looking paradigm, we tested whether Danish infants were more likely to ignore or accept consonant than vowel mispronunciations when matching familiar words with pictures. The infants successfully matched correctly pronounced familiar words with pictures but showed no vowel or consonant bias when matching mispronounced words with pictures. The lack of a bias for Danish vowels or consonants in familiar word recognition adds to evidence that lexical processing biases are language-specific and may additionally depend on developmental age and perhaps task difficulty.

Global-Local Processing in ADHD Is Not Limited to the Visuospatial Domain: Novel Evidence From the Auditory Domain

OBJECTIVE

Global-local visuospatial processing has been widely investigated in both healthy and clinical populations. Recent studies indicated that individuals with ADHD lack a global processing bias. However, the extant literature regarding global-local processing style focuses solely on the visual modality.

METHODS

ADHD (N = 21) and typically developed (TD) controls (N = 24) underwent an auditory global-local task, in which they had to decide whether the melody is ascending or descending in global or local conditions.

RESULTS

TD controls exhibited a classic global processing bias in the auditory task. The ADHD group exhibited no global processing bias, indicating similar processing for global and local dimensions, implying that individuals with ADHD are distracted by incongruent information in global and local conditions similarly, in both visual and auditory tasks.

CONCLUSION

A lack of global processing bias in ADHD is not limited to the visuospatial modality and likely reflects a broader and more general processing style.

Testing day: The effects of processing bias induced by Navon stimuli on the strength of the Müller-Lyer illusion

Explanations for the cognitive basis of the Müller-Lyer illusion are still frustratingly mixed. To date, Day’s (1989) theory of perceptual compromise has received little empirical attention. In this study, we examine the merit of Day’s hypothesis for the Müller-Lyer illusion by biasing participants toward global or local visual processing through exposure to Navon (1977) stimuli, which are known to alter processing level preference for a short time. Participants (N = 306) were randomly allocated to global, local, or control conditions. Those in global or local conditions were exposed to Navon stimuli for 5 min and participants were required to report on the global or local stimulus features, respectively. Subsequently, participants completed a computerized Müller-Lyer experiment where they adjusted the length of a line to match an illusory-figure. The illusion was significantly stronger for participants with a global bias, and significantly weaker for those with a local bias, compared with the control condition. These findings provide empirical support for Day’s “conflicting cues” theory of perceptual compromise in the Müller-Lyer illusion.

Preconscious processing biases predict emotional reactivity to stress

BACKGROUND

Anxiety vulnerability is associated with biases in attention: a tendency to selectively process negative relative to neutral or positive information. It is not clear whether this bias is: 1) related to the physiological response to stressful events, and 2) causally related to the development of anxiety disorders.

METHODS

We tested the predictive value of both preconscious and conscious attention biases in a prospective study of stress reactivity in a nonclinical sample. One hundred four male participants were assessed at baseline and then again 4 months (n = 82) and 8 months later (n = 70). Salivary cortisol and self-report measures were obtained at the baseline testing session in addition to measures of biased attention. Subsequent emotional reactivity was assessed by means of salivary cortisol and self-reported state-anxiety responses during a laboratory-based stressor (4 months later) as well as during a real-life stressor 8 months later (i.e., examination period).

RESULTS

Regression analyses indicated that a preconscious negative processing bias was the best predictor of the cortisol response to stressful events. Importantly, a measure of selective processing provided a better indicator of subsequent emotional reactivity than self-report measures of neuroticism, trait-anxiety, and extraversion.

CONCLUSIONS

These results suggest that preconscious biases toward negative material play a causal role in heightened anxiety vulnerability. Our results illustrate the potential utility of preconscious biases in attention in providing an early marker of anxiety vulnerability and a potential target for treatment intervention.