Temporal Processing of Joyful and Disgusting Food Pictures by Women With an Eating Disorder

Abstract

The present study used the presentation of food pictures and judgements about their duration to assess the emotions elicited by food in women suffering from an eating disorder (ED). Twenty-three women diagnosed with an ED, namely anorexia (AN) or bulimia nervosa (BN), and 23 healthy controls (HC) completed a temporal bisection task and a duration discrimination task. Intervals were marked with emotionally pre-rated pictures of joyful and disgusting food, and pictures of neutral objects. The results showed that, in the bisection task, AN women overestimated the duration of food pictures in comparison to neutral ones. Also, compared to participants with BN, they perceived the duration of joyful food pictures as longer, and tended to overestimate the duration of the disgusting ones. These effects on perceived duration suggest that AN women experienced an intense reaction of fear when they were confronted to food pictures. More precisely, by having elevated the arousal level and activated the defensive system, food pictures seemed to have speeded up the rhythm of the AN participants’ internal clock, which led to an overestimation of images’ duration. In addition, the results revealed that, in both tasks, ED women presented a lower temporal sensitivity than HC, which was related to their ED symptomatology (i.e., BMI, restraint and concern) and, particularly, to their weaker cognitive abilities in terms of attention, processing speed and working memory. Considered all together, the findings of the present experiment highlight the role of fear and anxiety in the manifestations of AN and point out the importance of considering non-temporal factors in the interpretation of time perception performance.

Relaxing and stimulating effects of odors on time perception and their modulation by expectancy

“…Conversely, Experiment 2 showed that when exposed to a stimulating odor (lemon), participants overestimated durations. These findings are consistent with the numerous studies that report the distortion of time perception in other sensory modalities caused by arousal-based mechanisms (Droit-Volet et al, 2011;Droit-Volet, Ramos, et al, 2013;Frederickx et al, 2013;Gagnon et al, 2018;Noulhiane et al, 2007;Rattat et al, 2018) rather than attentional-based ones (for a review, see Lake et al, 2016 and for an opinion article, see . Within the theoretical frame of the internal clock that contains a pacemaker-accumulator device, we can conclude that the strawberry odor decelerated the pacemaker's rate of pulse emission, whereas the lemon odor accelerated it.…”

“…In the present study, odors that are considered relaxing or stimulating were presented during a temporal bisection task. The temporal bisection task is commonly employed within the field of time perception (Grondin, 2010;Kopec & Brody, 2010) and emotions (e.g., Droit-Volet, Ramos, et al, 2013;Gagnon et al, 2018;Lake et al, 2016). It will allow us to distinguish whether the effects of odors are due to a state of arousal rather than a modification of attention.…”

“…A seven-point psychometric function that related the target duration with the proportion of long responses was drawn for each participant of each experimental condition. A cumulative Gaussian sigmoidal function was fitted to the proportion of long responses through a maximum likelihood estimation procedure (Gagnon et al, 2018;Grondin et al, 2015). Two dependent variables were extracted from each function.…”

“…Indeed, one of the most salient features of emotional external stimuli on individuals is their effect on perceived duration. This effect is specifically related to the arousal dimension, as demonstrated by the extensive literature where visual (Droit-Volet, Fayolle, & Gil, 2011;Gagnon, Bégin, Laflamme, & Grondin, 2018; or auditory stimuli (Droit-Volet, Ramos, Bueno, & Bigand, 2013;Mioni, Laflamme, Grassi, & Grondin, 2018;Noulhiane, Mella, Samson, Ragot, & Pouthas, 2007;Voyer & Reuangrith, 2015) were used. In this regard, very few studies have yet considered using odors (Schreuder, Hoeksma, Smeets, & Semin, 2014;Yue, Gao, Chen, & Wu, 2016).…”

Phonological working memory is adversely affected in adults with anorexia nervosa: a systematic literature review

“…The backwards verbal digit span was the most recurring measure utilising the phonological loop. Of the studies directly comparing AN and HC cohorts in the verbal digit span, 57% of the studies did not detect any significant difference between the groups [55][56][57][58], while 43% found impairments in the AN participants [43,59,60] (Fig. 2B).…”