Planning Abilities in Patients with Anorexia Nervosa Compared with Healthy Controls

Abstract

Objective: Altered cognitive functioning could have an important role in the development and maintenance of Anorexia Nervosa (AN). The majority of previous research has focused on flexibility and global-detail processing. The aim of this study was to explore planning abilities in women with AN. Method: Women with AN (n = 32) were compared to healthy controls (n = 42) using two different types of neuropsychological tasks for the assessment of planning abilities: Tower of London (ToL), a classic measure of planning abilities, and Zoo Map test, a more ecologically valid planning measure. Measures of AN psychopathology, anxiety, depression, and obsessive compulsivity were also collected. Results: The AN group did not differ from controls in the ToL (all p-values p > .05), although they performed significantly worse than controls in the main score of the Zoo Map (p = .02). A worse performance in the Zoo Map test More was associated with more eating disorders (rho = −.44, p = .018) and depressive (rho = −.42, p = .026) symptoms in the AN group. Conclusions: Our study suggests the presence of subtle planning difficulties in women with AN which might be better detected using tasks with increased ecological validity.

Keywords:

• Anorexia
• Neuropsychology
• Executive functions
• Planning
• Ecological measures.

Acknowledgments

Laura Carral has been awarded a “Río Hortega” research contract (CM010/0007) which was cofounded by Instituto de Salud Carlos III, Ministry of Science, Spain and Marqués de Valdecilla Public Foundation-Research Institute (IDIVAL). Jana González-Gómez has been awarded a “Wenceslao López-Albo” research contract (WLA02/11) founded by Marqués de Valdecilla Public Foundation-Research Institute (IDIVAL).