Cognitive Psychopathology and Neuropsychology Unit, Psychology Department, University of Geneva, Boulevard du Pont d'Arve, Geneva, Switzerland.
Appetite. 2011 Aug;57(1):263-71. doi: 10.1016/j.appet.2011.04.023. Epub 2011 May 8.
Studies suggest that cognitive deficits and attentional biases play a role in the development and maintenance of obesity and eating disorders. In this study, we simultaneously examine attentional biases, as well as inhibitory control and mental flexibility, which are keys to controlling unwanted behaviors and thoughts in obese patients with and without binge eating disorder.
16 obese patients with binge eating disorder and 16 patients without binge eating disorder were compared with 16 normal-weight controls on a "food/body-mental flexibility task", which allows the investigation of inhibitory control, mental flexibility and attention for stimuli related to the body and food.
All obese patients made significantly more errors (i.e., pressing a key when a distracter displayed) and more omissions (i.e., not pressing a key when a target displayed) than controls in both food and body sections of the task. Obese participants with binge eating disorder made significantly more errors and omissions than those without binge eating disorder. No difference between groups was found concerning mental flexibility and cognitive biases for food- and body-related targets.
These results suggest that obese patients have a general inhibition problem and difficulty focusing attention, which do not depend on the types of stimuli processed. The results also suggest that these cognitive deficits are more severe in obese patients with binge eating disorder, which indicates that there is a continuum of increasing inhibition and cognitive problems with increasingly disordered eating. These cognitive deficits may contribute to problematic eating behaviors.
研究表明，认知缺陷和注意力偏差在肥胖和饮食失调的发展和维持中起作用。在这项研究中，我们同时检查了注意力偏差，以及抑制控制和心理灵活性，这些都是控制肥胖患者和没有暴食障碍的患者的不良行为和思维的关键。
将 16 名患有暴食障碍的肥胖患者和 16 名没有暴食障碍的患者与 16 名正常体重的对照组进行比较，他们接受了一项“食物/身体-心理灵活性任务”，该任务可以调查抑制控制、心理灵活性和对与身体和食物相关的刺激的注意力。
所有肥胖患者在食物和身体两个部分的任务中都犯了明显更多的错误（即，当分心物显示时按一个键）和更多的遗漏（即，当目标物显示时不按一个键），比对照组多。患有暴食障碍的肥胖参与者比没有暴食障碍的参与者犯了更多的错误和遗漏。在对食物和身体相关目标的心理灵活性和认知偏差方面，两组之间没有差异。
这些结果表明，肥胖患者存在一般的抑制问题和注意力集中的困难，而这些问题与处理的刺激类型无关。结果还表明，这些认知缺陷在患有暴食障碍的肥胖患者中更为严重，这表明随着饮食失调的日益紊乱，抑制和认知问题的严重程度也在不断增加。这些认知缺陷可能导致有问题的进食行为。
