Disordered eating in female Indian students during the Covid-19 pandemic: The potential role of family.

Background: Within a paternalistic culture where weight is socially important and parental pressures are strong, 10 female Indian university students across various countries faced particular problems when living with their parents during the Covid-19 lockdowns.

Objective: The current interview study examines why cultural and familial factors during the Covid-19 lockdown had such an impact on female Indian university students' food and exercise behaviors and self-view.

Method: Semi-structured, online (Microsoft Teams) interviews were conducted with 10 female Indian university students aged 20-23, who had moved back in with their parents during lockdown.

Survival of the selfish: contrasting self-referential and survival-based encoding.

Processing information in the context of personal survival scenarios elicits a memory advantage, relative to other rich encoding conditions such as self-referencing. However, previous research is unable to distinguish between the influence of survival and self-reference because personal survival is a self-referent encoding context. To resolve this issue, participants in the current study processed items in the context of their own survival and a familiar other person's survival, as well as in a semantic context.

Divided attention selectively impairs memory for self-relevant information.

Information that is relevant to oneself tends to be remembered more than information that relates to other people, but the role of attention in eliciting this "self-reference effect" is unclear. In the present study, we assessed the importance of attention in self-referential encoding using an ownership paradigm, which required participants to encode items under conditions of imagined ownership by themselves or by another person. Previous work has established that this paradigm elicits a robust self-reference effect, with more "self-owned" items being remembered than "other-owned" items.

Exploring the effects of ownership and choice on self-memory biases.

Objects encoded in the context of temporary ownership by self enjoy a memorial advantage over objects owned by other people. This memory effect has been linked to self-referential encoding processes. The current inquiry explored the extent to which the effects of ownership are influenced by the degree of personal choice involved in assigning ownership.