Department of Psychology, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada.
Department of Psychology, North Dakota State University, Fargo, North Dakota, USA.
Int J Eat Disord. 2024 Oct;57(10):2106-2116. doi: 10.1002/eat.24253. Epub 2024 Jul 14.
Early adolescence is marked by elevated psychopathology, including disrupted eating attitudes and behaviors. Reward processing is an identified mechanism in portending eating pathology, that is, aberrant reward responsivity may contribute to disrupted reward-seeking behaviors (e.g., food consuming). This literature has focused on adults or mid-to-late adolescents, with little work done on early adolescence. We examined the linkages between reward feedback processing, indexed by event-related potentials (ERPs), and changes of emerging disordered eating in community-dwelling early adolescents.
At T1, 115 youths (66 girls, mean/SD age = 11.00/1.16 years) completed an EEG monetary reward Doors task. Youths completed the Eating Disorder Examination-Questionnaire Short at T1 and ~6 months (T2) and ~12 months (T3) after T1. In the ERP data, we isolated a reward positivity (RewP) and a late positive potential (LPP) via principal component analysis. We applied multilevel modeling to examine whether baseline ERPs interacted with Time in predicting disordered eating and whether these interactions varied by sex.
We found a significant Time × LPP interaction in girls but not boys. Among girls, only those with a smaller LPP toward the losses (versus wins), which might reflect suboptimal evaluation and regulatory processes in undesired situations, showed increases in disordered eating from T1 to T3.
We provided preliminary yet novel evidence concerning the prospective associations between reward processing and changes of disordered eating in early adolescents. Future studies along this line will be critical for understanding the early mechanisms of eating pathology, identifying youths at risk, and developing prevention strategies.
青春期早期的精神病理学发病率较高，包括饮食态度和行为的紊乱。奖励处理是预示进食障碍的一个已确定机制，即异常的奖励反应可能导致奖励寻求行为的紊乱（例如，进食）。该文献主要集中在成年人或青少年中期至后期，对青春期早期的研究较少。我们研究了社区青少年中，奖励反馈处理（由事件相关电位 [ERP] 来表示）与新兴饮食障碍变化之间的联系。
在 T1 时，115 名青少年（66 名女孩，平均/标准差年龄=11.00/1.16 岁）完成了一项 EEG 货币奖励门任务。青少年在 T1 时和 T1 后约 6 个月（T2）和 12 个月（T3）完成了饮食障碍检查问卷简短版。在 ERP 数据中，我们通过主成分分析分离了奖励正波（RewP）和晚期正波（LPP）。我们应用多层模型来检验基线 ERP 是否与时间相互作用来预测饮食障碍，以及这些相互作用是否因性别而异。
我们发现女孩中有显著的时间×LPP 相互作用，但男孩中没有。在女孩中，只有那些对损失（而非收益）的 LPP 较小的人，这可能反映了在不期望的情况下的次优评估和调节过程，从 T1 到 T3 显示出饮食障碍的增加。
我们提供了关于青春期早期奖励处理与饮食障碍变化之间的前瞻性关联的初步但新颖的证据。沿着这条线的未来研究对于理解进食障碍的早期机制、识别高危青少年以及制定预防策略至关重要。
