CONSCIOUS AND PRECONSCIOUS PROCESSING OF FOOD, BODY-WEIGHT AND SHAPE,AND EMOTION-RELATED WORDS IN WOMEN WITH ANOREXIA-NERVOSA

Objective: The present study was conducted to extend prior research on attention reward food and body weight and shape-related stimuli in wo men with eating disorders. Method: A modified Stroop color-naming task was completed by women with anorexia nervosa and by control females s ubdivided on a measure of dietary restraint. Eating disorder-relevant word categories included words connoting fatness, words connoting thin ness, low caloric density food words, high caloric density food words, and neutral, control words. Valence effects were controlled for by in cluding positively and negatively valenced emotion words. Stimuli were presented under both unmasked and masked conditions. Results: Using u nmasked stimuli, patients with anorexia nervosa, but nor unrestrained or restrained eaters, had delayed color-naming latencies for both thin and fat word categories and, to a lesser extent, for high caloric den sity food words. No differences were observed,with masked stimuli. Dis cussion: Our findings suggest that both thinness and fatness are espec ially salient to women with anorexia. The lack of effects for emotion words suggests that these findings do not reflect a valence effect. We found no evidence for preconscious attentional biases in the masked c ondition. (C) 1998 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.