Selective Memory Bias in Women With Bulimia Nervosa and Women With Depression

Abstract

Memory bias for weight and shape, and for food related words, was investigated in women with bulimia nervosa (12), women with depression (12) and female nonclinical controls (18). The aim of this study was to investigate whether women with bulimia nervosa demonstrate memory biases congruent with their primary concerns. Participants listened to target and control words. They performed a self-referent encoding task and recall memory was assessed. The results indicated that women with bulimia nervosa demonstrated a bias to recall positive and negative weight and shape related words compared to emotional words, but not compared to neutral nouns and body words. Memory biases for food related words were not found to be specific to women with bulimia nervosa, but were also found in women with depression. Contrary to previous research the recall bias for food related words was related to levels of hunger, in both groups. The findings provide partial support for memory biases for weight and shape, but not food related information in bulimia nervosa. These findings and their implications for existing research on information processing in eating disorders are discussed.

Bulimic symptoms, cognitions, and body dissatisfaction in women with major depressive disorder

“…In general, this work suggests that body dissatisfaction is at least as strongly associated with MDD as with BN (Joiner, Schmidt, & Wonderlich, 1997;Joiner, Wonderlich, Metalsky, & Schmidt, 1995;but see, Hurley, Palmer, & Stretch, 1990). However, there is evidence that other specific aspects of disordered eating, including negative assumptions (i.e., thoughts and beliefs) about weight, shape, and eating and selective memory bias for weight and shape-related words, distinguish depressed women from those with eating disorders (Cooper & Hunt, 1998;Hunt & Cooper, 2001).…”

Implicit Memory Bias for Eating‐ and Body Appearance‐Related Sentences in Eating Disorders: An Application of Jacoby's White Noise Task

“…Mathews, Mogg, May, & Eysenck, 1989). Previous research has found support for an explicit memory bias in eating-disordered individuals for eating disorder-relevant words (Hermans, Pieters, & Eelen, 1998;Hunt & Cooper, 2001;King, Polivy, & Herman, 1991;Sebastian, Williamson, & Blouin, 1996 Cognitive Behaviour Therapy Vol 37, No 3, pp. 135-145, 2008 bias (Baker, Williamson, & Sylve, 1995;King et al, 1991;Watkins, Martin, Muller, & Day, 1995), whereas others have only found partial (Israeli & Stewart, 2001) or no (Sebastian et al, 1996) support for such effects.…”

Cognitions and Emotions in Eating Disorders

“…Studies using paradigms such as the cued and free recall task and the directed forgetting paradigm indicate that EDs show specific explicit ED-related memory biases: EDs show a memory bias for food-, weight-, and shape-related words and not for general emotional words (Hermans et al 1998;Hunt and Cooper 2001;King et al 1991;Sebastian et al 1996;Suslow et al 2004). It was also found that the memory bias for high-caloric foods was independent of food deprivation in AN participants but not in BN participants (Hunt and Cooper 2001;Pietrowsky et al 2002;Suslow et al 2004). …”

“…Research has found convincing support for the existence of an explicit memory bias in ED patients, but data for an implicit memory bias are equivocal (Hermans et al 1998;Hunt and Cooper 2001;King et al 1991;Sebastian et al 1996;Pietrowsky et al 2002). Studies using paradigms such as the cued and free recall task and the directed forgetting paradigm indicate that EDs show specific explicit ED-related memory biases: EDs show a memory bias for food-, weight-, and shape-related words and not for general emotional words (Hermans et al 1998;Hunt and Cooper 2001;King et al 1991;Sebastian et al 1996;Suslow et al 2004).…”