Publications by authors named "Jennifer Svaldi"

Attentional biases towards food play an important role in the pathology of binge eating disorder (BED). Later stage electrophysiological potentials (P300, late positive potential) present promising markers of motivated attention with high temporal, albeit low spatial resolution. Complementing this, the N2pc is an earlier-latency component providing the possibility of more directly analyzing visuospatial attention.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: Overeating and obesity have been linked to deficient self-control and recent evidence suggests that the inhibitory spillover effect (ISE) may be an effective means to improve self-control. Specifically, it was shown that the ISE increases self-control by transfer of self-control capacity from one domain to another unrelated domain. Against this backdrop, our aim was to reduce hedonic food intake and body weight in non-dieting participants with overweight and obesity by transferring inhibitory control abilities from a food-unrelated domain to the food domain by means of an attribute conditioning procedure in a novel cognitive training (vs.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

The current study aimed to evaluate the effect different modalities (pictures and words) of food stimuli have on inhibitory control under different homeostatic states. To this end, the homeostatic state was altered by asking participants to fast for 16 h ( = 67) or eat lunch as usual ( = 76) before completing an online stop-signal task with modal (pictures) and amodal (words) food and valenced-matched non-food stimuli. The inclusion of non-food stimuli allowed us to test the food specificity of the effect.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background And Objectives: Eating disorders are often linked to the internalization of the thin-ideal and weight stigma. The present exploratory study investigates the effects of plus-sized fashion media on weight-related attitudes in bulimia nervosa (BN).

Methods: Women with BN (n=27) and without an eating disorder (n=28) were exposed to 17 pictures of plus-size fashion models.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Neuromodulation with transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) can transiently alter neural activity, but its spatial precision is low. High-definition (HD) tDCS was introduced to increase spatial precision by placing additional electrodes over the scalp. Initial evaluations of HD tDCS indicated polarity-specific neurophysiological effects-similar to conventional tDCS albeit with greater spatial precision.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Individuals with binge eating disorder (BED) exhibit a biased attention towards food stimuli. Against this backdrop, the present study with pre-registered design (ID: DRKS00012984) tested whether (a) a training designed to reduce attentional food processing indeed modifies this bias, (b) this reduction is evident in several measures of food-related attention and (c) this is associated with reductions in craving, binge frequency over the past 28 days and calories eaten in a laboratory based bogus taste test. Individuals with BED were randomly allocated to four sessions of either an attentional bias modification training (ABMT; n = 39) or a comparable no-modification control training (CT; n = 27).

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Neuromodulation with transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) is an increasingly popular research tool to experimentally manipulate cortical areas and probe their causal involvements in behavior, but its replicability and regional specificity are not clear. This registered report investigated cathodal tDCS effects on spatial-numerical associations (i.e.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: Anorexia Nervosa (AN) is a severe mental illness, which typically develops in adolescence and, if left untreated, often becomes chronic. Body dissatisfaction is a core characteristic of AN. Mirror exposure (ME) is an effective therapeutic technique to tackle body dissatisfaction in adult patients with eating disorders, but there is limited evidence for the effects of ME in adolescence.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Objective: Food avoidance is central to patients with anorexia nervosa-restrictive type (AN-R). Competing accounts in experimental psychopathology research suggest that food avoidance may result from automatic, habitual responses or from elevated inhibitory control abilities. This study investigated behavioral trajectories of food avoidance in a novel virtual reality stopping task.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Human agents immersed in metaverse technologies such as virtual reality (VR) are routinely disconnected from their actual physical appearance and embodied in another virtual body, referred to as self-avatar. Such body transformations can have implications for patients with eating disorders, or persons with extreme body dissatisfaction (BD). Changes in BD, weight anxiety, or body image are theoretically linked to visual selective attention, which can be measured with eye tracking.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Accounting for how the human mind represents the internal and external world is a crucial feature of many theories of human cognition. Central to this question is the distinction between modal as opposed to amodal representational formats. It has often been assumed that one but not both of these two types of representations underlie processing in specific domains of cognition (e.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Overweight and obesity are worldwide conditions associated with detrimental medical and psychosocial outcomes. As inhibitory control deficits are thought to contribute to weight gain, they are a worthwhile target for new approaches. Previous research has shown that the execution of inhibitory control in one domain leads to a concurrent increase of inhibitory control in another domain, an effect denoted as inhibitory spillover effect (ISE).

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Objectives: Hematopoietic stem cell transplantation (HSCT) or intensive chemotherapy for the treatment of malignant diseases is a highly distressing experience. The affected person's resilience is crucial to coping with this challenging experience. Experience with resilience-enhancing interventions in children and young adults during cancer therapy is scarce.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Purpose: Hematopoietic stem cell transplantations (HSCT) are extremely stressful procedures for pediatric patients. The activation of the hypothalamic pituitary adrenocortical axis (HPA) can influence the immune system negatively and therefore the overall outcome. The distress thermometer (DT) is an easy to use tool for the self-assessment of perceived distress.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Reinforcement learning is a core facet of motivation and alterations have been associated with various mental disorders. To build better models of individual learning, repeated measurement of value-based decision-making is crucial. However, the focus on lab-based assessment of reward learning has limited the number of measurements and the test-retest reliability of many decision-related parameters is therefore unknown.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Objective: Restrained eaters (RE) show behaviourally unregulated food intake, which is often explained by a deficit in inhibitory control. Despite evidence for general inhibitory deficits in RE, it remains unclear how the variety of (food) cues in our environment can influence cognitive control.

Method: In this re-analysis, we explored the inhibitory capacity of RE and unrestrained eaters (URE) on a stop-signal task with modal (pictures) and amodal (word) food and non-food stimuli.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Objective: Overweight and obesity are global problems with negative physical, social, and psychological outcomes. Besides other factors, inhibitory control deficits contribute to weight gain and development of overweight. The inhibitory spillover effect (ISE) improves inhibitory control through transfer of inhibitory control capacity from one domain to an unrelated, second domain.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Introduction: Vocal analysis of fundamental frequency (0) represents a suitable index to assess emotional activation. However, although 0 has often been used as an indicator of emotional arousal and different affective states, its psychometric properties are unclear. Specifically, there is uncertainty regarding the validity of the indices of 0 and 0 (0, 0, and 0) and whether higher or lower 0 indices are associated with higher arousal in stressful situations.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Objective: Hematopoietic stem cell transplantation (HSCT) is highly distressing and potentially traumatizing for pediatric and young adult patients (PYAP). At present, there is little evidence on their individual burdens.

Methods: In this prospective cohort study, the course of the psychological and somatic distress was investigated on eight observation days (day -8/-12, -5, 0 (day of HSCT), +10, +20, and + 30 before/after HSCT), using the PO-Bado external rating scale and the EORTC-QLQ-C15-PAL self-assessment questionnaire.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Previous studies indicate that participants with eating disorders show an attentional bias for the negatively valenced body parts of their own body. However, the neural basis underlying these processes has not been investigated. We conducted a preregistered combined functional MRI (fMRI)/eye tracking study and presented 35 women with binge eating disorder (BED) and 24 weight-matched control subjects (CG) with body part images of their own body and a weight-matched unknown body.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Objective: Body dissatisfaction is highly prevalent in overweight and obesity, while evidence for the efficacy of body image interventions is still scarce. This interventional pilot study investigates the efficacy and mechanisms of change of two stand-alone body image interventions in women with overweight and obesity.

Methods: Women with overweight and obesity (n = 76) were randomly assigned to five weekly sessions of either a mirror exposure (ME) or a cognitive restructuring intervention (CR) or to a wait-list control group (WCG).

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Cue-specific inhibitory control is assumed to support balanced food intake, but previous studies with established measures showed inconsistent results. We developed a novel kinematic stop task in virtual reality (VR) and report results from trajectory recordings. The primary objective of this explorative study was to assess the interrelationships between validated measures of food-related inhibitory control and novel measures from the VR task.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Impaired inhibitory control is a core transdiagnostic mechanism in psychopathology. Directly targeting inhibitory control in intervention studies has, however, produced only little improvement. Recently, promising improvements in inhibitory control were shown by capitalizing on the inhibitory spillover effect (ISE).

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Objective: Body image disturbance is crucial in the psychopathology of binge-eating disorder (BED). According to cognitive models of eating disorders, biased attentional processes contribute to the development and maintenance of body image concerns. Mirror exposure constitutes an effective method to improve body image.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Purpose: Despite the claim to integrate body image interventions in obesity treatment, little is known about the mechanisms involved in maintaining body dissatisfaction in persons with overweight and obesity. Therefore, the present study sought to investigate attentional processing of body stimuli in women with overweight and obesity (OW).

Methods: Women with OW (n = 82) and normal weight controls (NW; n = 44) conducted two eye-tracking paradigms.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF