Division of Psychological Medicine, Institute of Psychiatry, King's College London (KCL), London, United Kingdom.
PLoS One. 2012;7(1):e28331. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0028331. Epub 2012 Jan 12.
People with eating disorders (ED) frequently present with inflexible behaviours, including eating related issues which contribute to the maintenance of the illness. Small scale studies point to difficulties with cognitive set-shifting as a basis. Using larger scale studies will lend robustness to these data.
METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: 542 participants were included in the dataset as follows: Anorexia Nervosa (AN) n = 171; Bulimia Nervosa (BN) n = 82; Recovered AN n = 90; Healthy controls (HC): n = 199. All completed the Wisconsin Card Sorting Task (WCST), an assessment that integrates multiple measurement of several executive processes concerned with problem solving and cognitive flexibility. The AN and BN groups performed poorly in most domains of the WCST. Recovered AN participants showed a better performance than currently ill participants; however, the number of preservative errors was higher than for HC participants.
CONCLUSIONS/SIGNIFICANCE: There is a growing interest in the diagnostic and treatment implications of cognitive flexibility in eating disorders. This large dataset supports previous smaller scale studies and a systematic review which indicate poor cognitive flexibility in people with ED.
饮食失调（ED）患者常表现出行为僵化，包括与进食相关的问题，这些问题导致疾病持续存在。小规模研究指出认知转变困难是其基础。使用更大规模的研究将使这些数据更具稳健性。
方法/主要发现：共有 542 名参与者纳入数据集，具体如下：神经性厌食症（AN）n=171；神经性贪食症（BN）n=82；已康复的 AN n=90；健康对照组（HC）：n=199。所有参与者均完成了威斯康星卡片分类任务（WCST），这是一项综合了多种与解决问题和认知灵活性相关的执行过程的评估。AN 和 BN 组在 WCST 的大多数领域表现不佳。已康复的 AN 参与者的表现优于目前患病的参与者；然而，其保留错误的数量高于 HC 参与者。
结论/意义：人们对认知灵活性在饮食失调中的诊断和治疗意义越来越感兴趣。这个大型数据集支持了之前的小规模研究和系统综述，这些研究表明 ED 患者的认知灵活性较差。
