Psychology

The primary aim was to examine the influence of subclinical disordered eating on autobiographical memory specificity (AMS) and social problem solving (SPS). A further aim was to establish if AMS mediated the relationship between eating psychopathology and SPS. A non-clinical sample of 52 females completed the autobiographical memory test (AMT), where they were asked to retrieve specific memories of events from their past in response to cue words, and the means-end problem-solving task (MEPS), where they were asked to generate means of solving a series of social problems. Participants also completed the Eating Disorders Inventory (EDI) and Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale. After controlling for mood, high scores on the EDI subscales, particularly Drive-for-Thinness, were associated with the retrieval of fewer specific and a greater proportion of categorical memories on the AMT and with the generation of fewer and less effective means on the MEPS. Memory specificity fully mediate...

ABSTRACT The objective of the current study was to investigate whether emotion pictorial cues increase memory specificity among non-clinical participants. Undergraduate university students were presented with emotion word and pictorial cues on a prompted and nonprompted version of the Autobiographical Memory Test (AMT). In comparison to pictorial cues, participants retrieved significantly fewer specific autobiographical memories in response to word cues on the prompted AMT; however, there was no significant difference on the non-prompted AMT. Participants also retrieved significantly fewer specific memories in response to both word and pictorial cues on the non-prompted AMT compared with the prompted AMT. These results provide support for the hypothesis that among non-clinical participants, visual cues increase memory specificity over and above emotion. Further research is needed to investigate ways in which memory specificity can be increased and the use of imagery may be a promising avenue.

Individuals with clinical and subclinical depression (dysphoria) exhibit problems intentionally forgetting unwanted memories on the think/no-think (TNT) paradigm (Anderson & Green, 2001). However, providing substitute words to think about instead of the to-be-forgotten targets can improve forgetting in depressed patients. To determine if thought substitution can enhance forgetting in dysphoric participants and to examine the potential mechanisms (blocking or inhibition) that might underpin successful forgetting. Thirty-six dysphoric and 36 non-dysphoric participants learned neutral word-pairs and then practiced responding with the targets to some cues (think trials) and suppressing responses to others (no think trials). Half the participants were provided with substitute words to recall instead of the original targets (aided suppression) and half were simply told to avoid thinking about the targets (unaided suppression). Finally, participants completed two recall tests for the targe...

Transition from school to university can cause concern for many students. One issue is the gap between students' prior expectations and the realities of university life, which can cause significant distress, poor academic performance and increased drop-out rates if not managed effectively. Research has shown several similarities in the expectations of staff and students in regards to which factors determine academic success, but there is also evidence of dissonance. For example, staff consider independent study and critical evaluation as key factors, whereas students view feedback on drafts of work and support from staff as being most important. The aim of the current study was to determine what expectations students hold when starting university education, and what expectations university lecturers have of students entering university. Lecturers (= 20) and first year students (= 77) completed a series of questionnaires concerning their expectations of learning in HE (staff and ...

Emotion recognition deficits have consistently been reported in clinical and sub-clinical disordered eating. However, most studies have used static faces, despite the dynamic nature of everyday social interactions. The current aims were to confirm previous findings of emotion recognition deficits in non-clinical disordered eating and to determine if these deficits would be more evident in response to static as compared to dynamic emotional stimuli. We also aimed to establish if these emotion recognition deficits could be explained by comorbid psychopathology (depression, anxiety or alexithymia). Eighty-nine females were assigned to groups based on scores on the Eating Disorders Inventory (EDI); high (n = 45) and low (n = 44). Participants were presented with emotional faces and video clips portraying fear, anger, disgust, sadness, happiness, surprise and neutral affect. As predicted, the high EDI group correctly recognised fewer emotional displays than did the low EDI group. However...

Alexithymia, a multifaceted personality construct, characterised by difficulties identifying and describing one’s feelings, and by an externally focused cognitive style. Alexithymia is risk factor for negative affect and disordered eating. Previous work involving patients with anorexia nervosa revealed that high levels of alexithymia were directly linked to eating disorder symptoms and also indirectly linked via negative affect. Our aim was to establish if these findings generalised to subclinical disordered eating symptoms. A non-clinical sample of females (n=206) completed measures of depression, anxiety, alexithymia, and disordered eating. As expected, negative affect (combined depression and anxiety) mediated the effect of alexithymia (difficulty identifying feelings and difficulty describing feelings) on disordered eating symptoms (drive for thinness, bulimia, and body dissatisfaction). However, also as expected, direct effects of these alexithymia facets on disordered eating w...

High levels of alexithymia are typically associated with impaired memory for emotional, but not neutral words. We conducted two experimental studies to establish if this effect generalises to non-verbal socially relevant stimuli. Thirty-nine female undergraduates (Study 1) viewed faces with different expressions (neutral, angry, happy or sad) and 38 female students (Study 2) viewed videos of realistic social interactions (featuring anger, happiness, sadness or neutral affect). Participants were asked to identify the emotion portrayed and were subsequently given an intentional recognition memory test for the stimuli. They also completed self-report measures of alexithymia and mood (depression & anxiety). In Study 1, memory for emotional (especially angry), but not neutral faces was negatively related to the “difficulty describing feelings” facet of alexithymia. In Study 2, memory for emotional (particularly those featuring anger), but not neutral videos was negatively related to the ...

Something akin to motion perception occurs even when actual motion is not present but merely implied. However, it is not known if the experience of implied motion occurs during the perception of faces or even different affects. Moreover, it is not known if implied motion is moderated by individual differences in anxiety, depression or alexithymia. To examine this, participants were presented with picture pairs showing facial affect that implied either a forward or backward motion, i.e., depicting an increasing intensity in affect, or its diminution. Participants indicated whether or not the second face in the pair was the same as, or different from, the first face shown. To measure general affect recognition ability the Ekman 60 faces test was administered, as were the Toronto Alexithymia scale (TAS-20) and the Hospital Anxiety and Depression scale (HADS). Analysis of error rates revealed significant main effects for direction and emotion. There was no significant correlation with o...

BackgroundAlexithymia is an independent predictor of symptoms of eating disorders, but also influences disordered eating in clinical samples indirectly via negative affect (depression and anxiety). The aim of the current work was to establish if alexithymia predicts disordered eating in a non-clinical sample directly and indirectly (via negative affect).MethodsA sample of healthy females (n = 248) completed measures of depression, anxiety, alexithymia, and disordered eating (drive for thinness, bulimia, and body dissatisfaction). Bias-corrected bootstrapping was used to conduct parallel mediation analyses to determine if negative affect (depression and anxiety) mediated the influence of alexithymia on disordered eating.ResultsThe relationship between alexithymia (difficulty identifying feelings) and drive for thinness was mediated by depression but not anxiety. The link between difficulty identifying feelings and bulimia was mediated by anxiety but not depression. The correlation be...