Emotion reactivity and regulation in eating pathology

Temple Univ Of The Commonwealth, Philadelphia PA

Investigators

Abstract

[unreadable] DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): There has been much speculation that individuals who evidence eating pathology have impairments in emotional processing and emotion regulation (e.g., Mountford, 2004; Vervaet et al., 2003). Despite the critical role emotions are thought to play in the etiology and maintenance of eating pathology there has been relatively little empirical work conducted in this area. The purpose of the proposed study is to further understand emotional impairments in women with eating pathology by studying emotional reactivity and regulation in response to affect eliciting pictures (pleasant, unpleasant and neutral) in women with primarily anorexic-type symptoms (restrictors), primarily bulimic symptoms , and controls using psychophysiological and subjective indices of emotional response. It is hypothesized that both restrictor and bulimic participants will show greater physiological reactivity to the pleasant and unpleasant pictures compared to the control participants, and the pattern of heightened reactivity will continue to be displayed among these two groups after picture offset, consistent with emotion dysregulation. In addition, it is expected that restrictor participants will report diminished self-reported emotion relative to the bulimic and control participants. [unreadable] [unreadable] [unreadable]