Department of Psychology, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, USA.
Department of Psychology, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, USA.
Appetite. 2022 Oct 1;177:106137. doi: 10.1016/j.appet.2022.106137. Epub 2022 Jun 20.
Childhood trauma has been associated with substance use disorders (SUDs), but less research has investigated its association with food addiction (i.e., compulsive intake of highly processed foods containing refined carbohydrates and/or added fat). Existing research on childhood trauma and food addiction has focused primarily on women from restricted samples. Further, emotion dysregulation difficulties are implicated in both childhood trauma and food addiction, but research has not explored whether it may play a mediating role.
The current study utilizes a sample of 310 participants recruited from Amazon Mechanical Turk (mean age = 41.3 years old, 47.4% men, 78.7% white) to investigate the mediating role of emotion dysregulation in the association between childhood trauma and food addiction. We also conducted exploratory analyses to investigate for gender differences in these associations. Gender-stratified correlational matrixes were conducted to investigate associations between childhood trauma, food addiction, and emotional dysregulation. Moderated mediation models and multilevel regressions were also conducted to identify the role of gender in the association between childhood trauma, food addiction, and emotion dysregulation.
Emotion dysregulation was found to partially mediate the associations between food addiction and childhood trauma and gender was found to moderate associations between childhood trauma and emotion dysregulation, as well as childhood trauma and food addiction. Both moderating pathways were significantly stronger for men compared to women.
Results suggests that emotion dysregulation may be one important mediator in the association between childhood trauma and food addiction, particularly for men. The identification of other potential mechanisms contributing to the association between childhood trauma and food addiction and the use of longitudinal measurement strategies will be important in future research.
童年创伤与物质使用障碍（SUD）有关，但较少有研究调查其与食物成瘾（即强迫摄入含有精制碳水化合物和/或添加脂肪的高度加工食品）的关系。现有的关于童年创伤和食物成瘾的研究主要集中在来自限制样本的女性上。此外，情绪调节困难与童年创伤和食物成瘾都有关，但研究尚未探讨它是否可能起中介作用。
本研究利用来自亚马逊 Mechanical Turk 的 310 名参与者（平均年龄为 41.3 岁，47.4%为男性，78.7%为白人）的样本，调查情绪调节困难在童年创伤与食物成瘾之间的关系中的中介作用。我们还进行了探索性分析，以调查这些关联中的性别差异。进行了性别分层相关矩阵分析，以调查童年创伤、食物成瘾和情绪调节之间的关联。还进行了调节中介模型和多层次回归，以确定性别在童年创伤、食物成瘾和情绪调节之间的关联中的作用。
情绪调节被发现部分中介了食物成瘾与童年创伤之间的关联，并且性别调节了童年创伤与情绪调节之间以及童年创伤与食物成瘾之间的关联。对于男性来说，这两个调节途径都明显强于女性。
结果表明，情绪调节可能是童年创伤与食物成瘾之间关联的一个重要中介，尤其是对于男性。在未来的研究中，确定导致童年创伤与食物成瘾之间关联的其他潜在机制，并使用纵向测量策略将是重要的。
