Do Individuals at Risk for Eating Disorders Exhibit Negative Priming Deficits?

Abstract

Fifty people (25 at risk for an eating disorder, 25 controls) performed a simple reaction-time (SRT) task and a negative-priming (NP) task. The two groups did not differ on the SRT task. For the NP task, the controls displayed the NP effect (responses on critical trials were slower than responses on control trials). At-risk participants, however, revealed no such NP effect. Although the pattern of NP performance in the at-risk participants may indicate that they as a group had deficiencies in their ability to inhibit irrelevant information, it is also possible that issues related to obsessionality, perfectionism, and restraint in the at-risk group affected the results.