期刊
INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF EATING DISORDERS
卷 54, 期 8, 页码 1509-1518出版社
WILEY
DOI: 10.1002/eat.23556
关键词
eating disorders; empathy; experimental tasks; imitation; mentalizing; social cognition
资金
- MIUR [262]
- King's College London
- South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust
- Biomedical Research Centre
- Canadian Institutes of Health Research
Women with eating disorders have difficulties in mentalizing and imitating observed actions, but show no significant differences in empathy compared to healthy women. These findings suggest that intervention targeting specific areas of social cognition may help improve patients' social skills.
Objective Eating disorders are psychiatric illnesses characterized by extreme eating behaviors, such as sustained food restriction or loss of control over eating. Symptoms are thought to be maintained by a variety of mechanisms, one of which may be the socio-cognitive impairments associated with eating disorders. While some previous work has addressed socio-cognitive impairments in eating disorders, this work has relied mostly on self-report data. Method Here we employed computerized tests of (a) mentalizing (ability to infer the mental states of others); (b) empathy (the degree to which the emotional states of others can be identified and the degree to which the states of others impact one's own emotional state); and (c) imitation (the degree to which observation of another's actions prompts the performance of those actions); in a group of 78 women with an eating disorder and a matched control group of 66 healthy women. Results People with eating disorders showed both hyper- and hypo-mentalizing and reduced accuracy of emotional and cognitive mental state inference. They displayed less imitation of observed actions, but no differences in empathy compared to healthy controls. Although anxiety and depressive symptoms had significant effects on mentalizing, most of the observed inter-group differences persisted. Discussion Women with eating disorders have difficulties mentalizing and imitating observed actions despite intact non-social automatic imitation, compared to healthy controls. These findings provide an indication that intervention modules to strengthen specific areas of social cognition might be helpful to improve patients' social skills.
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