Jin Luyao, Han Wenyue, Zheng Zheng
School of Medicine & Holistic Integrative Medicine, Nanjing University of Chinese Medicine, Nanjing, China.
Changzhou Vocational Institute of Textile and Garment, Changzhou, China.
Front Psychiatry. 2023 Feb 15;14:1108995. doi: 10.3389/fpsyt.2023.1108995. eCollection 2023.
Disordered eating behaviors (DEBs) are very common among female college students, which seriously endanger their health and well-being. Therefore, the study of the mechanism of DEBs can provide effective evidence for early detection and intervention.
In total of 54 female college students were recruited and assigned to DEB group ( = 29) and healthy control (HC) group ( = 25) according to their scores in the Eating Attitudes Test-26 (EAT-26). Then, the Exogenous Cueing Task (ECT) was used to evaluate their reaction time (RT) to the location of a target dot preceded by a food or neutral cue.
The study found that compared with HC group, DEB group showed more attentional engagement to food stimuli, indicating that attentional vigilance to food information could be considered as a specific attentional bias of DEBs.
Our findings not only provide evidence of the potential mechanism of DEBs from the perspective of attentional bias, but also can be considered as an effective and objective indicator for early screening of subclinical eating disorders (EDs).
饮食紊乱行为（DEB）在女大学生中非常普遍，严重危及她们的健康和福祉。因此，对饮食紊乱行为机制的研究可为早期发现和干预提供有效依据。
共招募54名女大学生，根据她们在饮食态度测试-26（EAT-26）中的得分分为饮食紊乱行为组（n = 29）和健康对照组（HC）（n = 25）。然后，使用外部线索任务（ECT）评估她们对食物或中性线索之前目标点位置的反应时间（RT）。
研究发现，与HC组相比，饮食紊乱行为组对食物刺激表现出更多的注意力投入，表明对食物信息的注意力警觉可被视为饮食紊乱行为的一种特定注意力偏差。
我们的研究结果不仅从注意力偏差的角度为饮食紊乱行为的潜在机制提供了证据，也可被视为亚临床饮食失调（ED）早期筛查的有效且客观的指标。
