Attentional bias in restrictive eating disorders. Stronger attentional avoidance of high-fat food compared to healthy controls?

A striking feature of the restricting subtype of anorexia nervosa (AN) is that these patients are extremely successful in restricting their food intake. Possibly, they are highly efficient in avoiding attentional engagement of food cues, thereby preventing more elaborate processing of food cues and thus subsequent craving. This study examined whether patients diagnosed with restrictive eating disorders (‘restricting AN-like patients’; N = 88) indeed show stronger attentional avoidance of visual food stimuli than healthy controls (N = 76). Attentional engagement and disengagement were assessed by means of a pictorial exogenous cueing task, and (food and neutral) pictures were presented for 300, 500, or 1000 ms. In the 500 ms condition, both restricting AN-like patients and healthy controls demonstrated attentional avoidance of high-fat food as indexed by a negative cue-validity effect and impaired attentional engagement with high-fat food, whereas no evidence was found for facilitated disengagement from high-fat food. Within the group of restricting AN-like patients, patients with relatively severe eating pathology showed relatively strong attentional engagement with low-fat food. There was no evidence for attentional bias in the 300 and 1000 ms condition. The pattern of findings indicate that attentional avoidance of high-fat food is a common phenomenon that may become counterproductive in restricting AN-like patients, as it could facilitate their restricted food intake.

► We examined attentional bias for food in restricting anorexia nervosa.
► Restricting AN patients and controls show attentional avoidance of high-fat food.
► Eating pathology was related with stronger attentional engagement with low-fat food.
► Attentional avoidance of high-fat food seems a common phenomenon that may become counterproductive in AN.