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Large study finds poor cognitive flexibility in subjects with eating disorders
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Poor cognitive flexibility was observed in people with eating disorders, according to a large dataset study.
Researchers at King’s College London analyzed 542 participants: 171 with anorexia nervosa, 82 with bulimia nervosa, 90 who recovered from anorexia nervosa and 199 healthy controls.
Participants with anorexia nervosa and bulimia nervosa performed poorly on the Wisconsin Card Sorting Task (WCST), an assessment that measures various executive processes related to problem solving and cognitive flexibility. Test results were higher in the subjects who had recovered from anorexia nervosa compared with currently ill participants, but there were more perseverative errors in recovered anorexia nervosa subjects than healthy controls.
A primary outcome of the WCST is a measure of perseveration, which researchers defined as “repetitive responses to a stimulus/rule that continues despite a shift in the stimulus requiring a different response.”
“This line of research is potentially useful to better understand [eating disorders] in terms of cognition as well as comorbidity, lifetime diagnosis and personality characteristics and may also help us develop improved treatment approaches,” the study authors said.
Disclosure: Research supported by Psychiatry Research Trust, National Institute of Health Research Biomedical Research Centre for Mental Health, and the Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust and Institute of Psychiatry. Swiss Anorexia Foundation provided financial support.