Autobiographical memory specificity and restrained eating: examining the influence of priming with images of healthy and unhealthy foods.

Background: Dietary restraint has been linked to deficits in the ability to recall detailed memories of personally experienced events (referred to as autobiographical memory specificity). As priming with healthy foods increases the salience of restraint it would be expected to lead to greater deficits in memory specificity.

Objective: To determine if priming word cues with images of healthy or unhealthy foods would influence the specificity of memory retrieval, and if deficits in memory specificity would be more evident in those reporting higher levels of dietary restraint, or currently dieting.

Direct and indirect effects of alexithymia on disordered eating in a non-clinical female sample: Determining the role of negative affect.

Background: Alexithymia is an independent predictor of symptoms of eating disorders, but also influences disordered eating in clinical samples indirectly negative affect (depression and anxiety). The aim of the current work was to establish if alexithymia predicts disordered eating in a non-clinical sample directly and indirectly ( negative affect).

Methods: A sample of healthy females ( = 248) completed measures of depression, anxiety, alexithymia, and disordered eating (, , and ).

A systematic review of the relationship between alexithymia and emotional eating in adults.

Elucidating psychological characteristics associated with emotional eating may further inform interventions for this behaviour related to eating psychopathology. The present systematic review aimed to examine the relationship between alexithymia and self-reported emotional eating in adults, and provide a narrative synthesis of the existing literature. Using the PRISMA method for systematic reviews, six databases (MEDLINE, PsycInfo, PsycArticles, PubMed, SCOPUS, and Web of Science) were searched for peer-reviewed, quantitative research published between January 1994 and 20 July 2021, when the searches were conducted.

Advancing the assessment of mindful eating: Exploring the psychometric properties and validating the mindful eating behaviour scale in English.

Mindful eating has been described as significant in motivating research and clinical outcomes in weight regulation and healthy eating. The use of psychometric tools to measure mindful eating is problematic, with results often leading to interpretations that are not reflective of mindful eating theory and fundamentals of mindfulness. In this research, we explored the Mindful Eating Behaviour Scale (MEBS) within a British sample to validate the factorial structure, and widen the use of a scale that appears appropriate for measuring mindful eating.

Are music listening strategies associated with reduced food consumption following negative mood inductions; a series of three exploratory experimental studies.

Emotions play an important role in overeating, yet there is little research looking at practical strategies to reduce overeating in response to a negative mood. In three different experimental studies, we tested if exposure to music can reduce food consumption in a negative mood. Female undergraduates (N = 120-121 in each study) completed a measure of emotional eating and reported baseline hunger.

Emotional eating during COVID-19 in the United Kingdom: Exploring the roles of alexithymia and emotion dysregulation.

Emotional eating, generally defined as (over)-eating in response to negative emotions, has been associated with poor physical and psychological outcomes. During a time of heightened negative affect, it is important to understand the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and associated lockdown measures on eating behaviours, and further elucidate the ways in which emotional eating is related to emotion dysregulation and impaired abilities to identify emotions (i.e.

The influence of non-clinical eating-related psychopathology on the recognition of emotion from static faces and realistic social interactions.

Emotion recognition deficits have consistently been reported in clinical and sub-clinical disordered eating. However, most studies have used static faces, despite the dynamic nature of everyday social interactions. The current aims were to confirm previous findings of emotion recognition deficits in non-clinical disordered eating and to determine if these deficits would be more evident in response to static as compared to dynamic emotional stimuli.

The influence of variations in eating disorder-related symptoms on processing of emotional faces in a non-clinical female sample: An eye-tracking study.

This study aimed to: (i) determine if the attention bias towards angry faces reported in eating disorders generalises to a non-clinical sample varying in eating disorder-related symptoms; (ii) examine if the bias occurs during initial orientation or later strategic processing; and (iii) confirm previous findings of impaired facial emotion recognition in non-clinical disordered eating. Fifty-two females viewed a series of face-pairs (happy or angry paired with neutral) whilst their attentional deployment was continuously monitored using an eye-tracker. They subsequently identified the emotion portrayed in a separate series of faces.

The influence of eating psychopathology on autobiographical memory specificity and social problem-solving.

The primary aim was to examine the influence of subclinical disordered eating on autobiographical memory specificity (AMS) and social problem solving (SPS). A further aim was to establish if AMS mediated the relationship between eating psychopathology and SPS. A non-clinical sample of 52 females completed the autobiographical memory test (AMT), where they were asked to retrieve specific memories of events from their past in response to cue words, and the means-end problem-solving task (MEPS), where they were asked to generate means of solving a series of social problems.

Development of the Mealtime Emotions Measure for adolescents (MEM-A): gender differences in emotional responses to family mealtimes and eating psychopathology.

This study aimed to examine the factor structure of the Mealtime Emotions Measure for adolescents (MEM-A), a novel measure of emotional responses experienced during family mealtimes. Additionally, it examined gender differences in mealtime emotions and also the relationships between mealtime emotions and levels of eating psychopathology, when controlling for anxiety or depression. Adolescent participants (N = 527; 282 girls, 245 boys) with a mean age of 15.

Using intervention mapping to develop a work-related guidance tool for those affected by cancer.

Background: Working-aged individuals diagnosed and treated for cancer require support and assistance to make decisions regarding work. However, healthcare professionals do not consider the work-related needs of patients and employers do not understand the full impact cancer can have upon the employee and their work. We therefore developed a work-related guidance tool for those diagnosed with cancer that enables them to take the lead in stimulating discussion with a range of different healthcare professionals, employers, employment agencies and support services.

The influence of emotional intensity on facial emotion recognition in disordered eating.

Significant facial emotion recognition (FER) deficits have been observed in participants exhibiting high levels of eating psychopathology. The current study aimed to determine if the pattern of FER deficits is influenced by intensity of facial emotion and to establish if eating psychopathology is associated with a specific pattern of emotion recognition errors that is independent of other psychopathological or personality factors. Eighty females, 40 high and 40 low scorers on the Eating Disorders Inventory (EDI) were presented with a series of faces, each featuring one of five emotional expressions at one of four intensities, and were asked to identify the emotion portrayed.

Mealtimes on eating disorder wards: a two-study investigation.

Objective: This research had two aims. First, to assess the current mealtime practices within UK eating disorders units. Second, to investigate staff perspectives of these mealtimes, including their involvement and understanding of patients' experience.

Effects of distraction and focused attention on actual and perceived food intake in females with non-clinical eating psychopathology.

The aim of this study was to determine the effects of distraction and focused attention on both food intake and accuracy of perceived intake in women with non-clinical levels of disordered eating. In a laboratory study, twenty-seven young women consumed three identical pasta meals once a week for three consecutive weeks. Meals were eaten ad libitum during a control and two test conditions, in which attention was either diverted away from (distraction condition) or directed towards food-related stimuli (focused attention condition).

Emotion recognition and alexithymia in females with non-clinical disordered eating.

Objectives: The aims were to determine if emotion recognition deficits observed in eating disorders generalize to non-clinical disordered eating and to establish if other psychopathological and personality factors contributed to, or accounted for, these deficits.

Design: Females with high (n=23) and low (n=22) scores on the Eating Disorder Inventory (EDI) were assessed on their ability to recognise emotion from videotaped social interactions. Participants also completed a face memory task, a Stroop task, and self-report measures of alexithymia, depression and anxiety.

Variants of the peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor gamma- and beta-adrenergic receptor genes are associated with measures of compensatory eating behaviors in young children.

Background: Young children can regulate energy precisely in the short term, showing the potential for an innate compensation mechanism of eating behavior. However, data suggest that precise compensation is attenuated as a function of increasing adiposity, parental feeding style, and age. Common variation in candidate obesity genes may account for some of the individual variation observed in short-term energy compensation.

Energy intakes of children after preloads: adjustment, not compensation.

Background: Young children accurately compensate for energy-dense preloads consumed before test meals. The accuracy of compensation seems to deteriorate as a function of age.

Objective: The hypothesis that accurate energy compensation varies by age, body mass index, and individual characteristics of children and their mothers was tested.

Psychometric and behavioral measures of central auditory function: the relationship between dichotic listening and digit span tasks.

We hypothesized that the Digit Span (DS) subtest and component tasks (Wechsler, 1991) would show strong relationships with a dichotic listening test (Musiek, 1983). In two sets of archival clinical data (N = 74 and N = 51) we demonstrated that: (a) individuals with central auditory deficits had lower DS scores, F(1, 72) = 7.34, p = .