Altered orienting of attention in anorexia nervosa

PSYCHIATRY RESEARCH

卷:229

Article

Dalmaso, Mario¹  Castelli, Luigi^1,2  Franchetti, Lorena¹  Carli, Lorenza³  Todisco, Patrizia³  Palomba, Daniela^2,4  Galfano, Giovanni^1,2 

[1] Univ Padua, Dipartimento Psicol Sviluppo & Socializzaz, I-35131 Padua, Italy

[2] Univ Padua, Ctr Neurosci, I-35131 Padua, Italy

[3] Ctr Disturbi Comportamento Alimentare, Vicenza, Italy

[4] Univ Padua, Dipartimento Psicol Gen, I-35131 Padua, Italy

关键词: Anorexia nervosa;    Spatial attention;    Social cognition;   

DOI  :  10.1016/j.psychres.2015.06.044

来源: Elsevier

【 摘 要 】

The study of cognitive processes in anorexia nervosa (AN) is largely unexplored, although recent evidence suggests the presence of impairments in both social cognition and attention processing. Here we investigated AN patients' ability to orient attention in response to social and symbolic visual stimuli. AN patients and matched controls performed a task in which gaze and pointing gestures acted as social directional cues for spatial attention. Arrows were also included as symbolic cue. On each trial, a centrally-placed cue appeared oriented rightwards or leftwards. After either 200 or 700 ms, a lateralized neutral target (a letter) requiring a discrimination response appeared in a location either spatially congruent or incongruent with the directional cue. Controls showed a reliable orienting irrespective of both temporal interval and cue type. AN patients showed a reliable orienting at both temporal intervals only in response to pointing gestures. Both gaze and arrow cues failed to orient attention at the short temporal interval, that is when attention is under reflexive control, whereas a reliable orienting emerged at the long temporal interval. These results provide preliminary evidence of altered reflexive orienting of attention in AN patients that does not extend to body-related cues such as pointing gestures. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.

【 授权许可】

Free