Department of General Internal Medicine and Psychosomatics, University Hospital Heidelberg, Im Neuenheimer Feld 410, 69120 Heidelberg, Germany; University of Heidelberg, Centre for Psychological Psychotherapy, Hauptstrasse 47-51, 69117 Heidelberg, Germany.
Psychiatry Res. 2013 Dec 15;210(2):548-52. doi: 10.1016/j.psychres.2013.06.024. Epub 2013 Jul 11.
Food restriction and weight-loss have been proposed to represent pathogenic mechanisms of emotion regulation in anorexia nervosa (AN). However, there is a lack of studies empirically examining this hypothesis. Therefore, the present study compared 25 women with AN and 25 healthy control women (HC) regarding spontaneous emotional processing of autobiographic memories. Participants' idiographic memories of sad autobiographic events were analyzed using computerized, quantitative text analysis as an unobtrusive approach of nonreactive assessment. Compared to HC, AN patients retrieved more negative but a comparable number of positive emotions. Moreover, the lesser the body weight in AN patients, the lesser negative emotions they retrieved, irrespective of current levels of depressive symptoms and duration of illness. No such association was found in HC. These preliminary findings are in line with models of AN proposing that food restriction and weight-loss may be negatively reinforced by the alleviation of aversive emotional responses.
饮食限制和体重减轻被认为是神经性厌食症（AN）中情绪调节的致病机制。然而，目前还缺乏实证研究来检验这一假设。因此，本研究比较了 25 名 AN 患者和 25 名健康对照组（HC）女性在自传体记忆中自发的情绪处理。参与者关于悲伤自传事件的个体化记忆使用计算机化、定量文本分析进行分析，这是一种非反应性评估的不显眼方法。与 HC 相比，AN 患者回忆起更多的负面情绪，但正面情绪数量相当。此外，AN 患者的体重越低，他们回忆起的负面情绪就越少，而与当前的抑郁症状水平和病程无关。在 HC 中没有发现这种关联。这些初步发现与提出饮食限制和体重减轻可能通过减轻厌恶情绪反应而得到负强化的 AN 模型一致。
