Time evaluation and its accuracy in eating disorders: differences in relation to interoceptive awareness

Abstract

Purpose Time evaluation has been poorly studied in eating disorder (ED) patients despite its relationship with body awareness, which is a core psychopathological feature in EDs and is influenced by impulsivity, interoception, and working memory. This study aims to evaluate time estimation and its accuracy across the ED spectrum in connection with specific and general psychopathology. Methods A group of 215 women was enrolled in a computerized task involving the estimation of 1-min intervals. Impulsivity and body awareness constructs (self-monitoring, depersonalization, interoceptive deficit) were evaluated and examined for significant correlations with time estimation and the accuracy of the measure. Results Patients with EDs showed an impaired ability to estimate time, with an accuracy that positively correlated with compulsive self-monitoring (p = 0.03). Differences between diagnostic subgroups showed an overestimation of time in anorexia nervosa patients and an underestimation of time in binge eating disorder patients, whose time estimation was also less accurate. Conclusion The relationship between time estimation and compulsive self- monitoring might corroborate the presence of an imbalanced integration of information in patients with EDs that was not present in the community women included in the study. Time perception should be further evaluated in the ED field, and longitudinal changes due to psychopathological recovery or BMI changes should be examined. Level of evidence Level III: Evidence obtained from a well-designed cohort or case–control analytic study.

Linguistic embodiment in typical and atypical anorexia nervosa: Evidence from an image‐word matching task

“…All these aspects play a role in the linguistic representation and the current discussion about the linguistic representation of our body, which is overcoming the traditional dualistic contraposition between body and mind (Lindblom, 2020). Anorexia nervosa has been described as a disorder characterised by a "lost" emotional self, with interoceptive difficulties and social cognition impairments (Meneguzzo et al, 2020(Meneguzzo et al, , 2022Oldershaw et al, 2019)Embodied cognition might play a key role in understanding the relationships between body and mind in the future. However, these are also characteristics that an improvement in embodied cognition might modify.…”

“…This finding corroborates the central role that correct integration of bodily information with body image plays in AN. Correct integration has also been proposed as a psychological trait in AN, although further studies are needed (Jenkinson et al., 2018; Meneguzzo et al., 2022; Monteleone et al., 2021).…”

“…Morphological analyses have found a disruption in the integration of somatosensory and visuospatial information in individuals with AN even after weight recovery, indicating that a neural substrate may play a role in the development and maintenance of embodiment impairments and body processing (Favaro et al., 2012). Previous studies have also pointed out that people with AN have impaired exbodiment processes (i.e., bottom‐up processes), such as the ability to evaluate affective touch, haptic perception, interoception, nociception, tactile perception, and the internal clock system (Meneguzzo et al., 2022; Teaford et al., 2021; Zatti & Zarbo, 2015). Finally, body image disturbance in AN seems to be modified by sensory perception changes linked to positive embodiment or disembodiment, showing an aspect still poorly evaluated (Burychka et al., 2021; Keizer et al., 2016).…”