Cognitive Theory And AN Flashcards
Research support for the role of cognitive factors in AN:
Lang et. al. (2015)
compared neuropsychological measures in 41 adolescents and children with AN and 43 healthy controls
found that AN individuals displayed a more inflexible be inefficient cognitive processing style
e.g. They were less able to overcome previously held beliefs or habits in the face of new info
the inefficient cognitive processing was independent of any clinical or demographic factors suggesting that it represented an underlying characteristic of AN
Support from Stroop test studies:
Bernis and Fairburn et. al
Ben-Tovim et al. (1989)
predict that an AN individual’s attention will be biased towards anything related to body fatness/fattening foods
this is due to such stimuli being perceived as more threatening to people with an ED
Ben-Tovim: used a food ‘stroop’ test and discovered that patients with AN found it harder to colour-name words relevant to their weight concerns
this suggests a selective preoccupation with those stimuli and words related to them
CBT-E: support from the success of therapy:
Fairburn et. al (2015)
CBT-E is a form of treatment designed to address the cognitive problems that underlie EDs
F: compared CBTE to IPT, an alternative treatment with no cognitive element
130 patients with an ED were randomised to either CBTE or IPT
they sound that after 20 weeks of treatment, two thirds of CBTE participants met the criteria for remission compared to one third of IPTs
this shows that cognitive issues are indeed the root cause of AN
Methodological limitations of cognitive theories of AN:
Viken et. al (2002)
this theory relies heavily on self reports of cognitive processing
it’s assumed that a pre-occupation with thoughts of weight&thinness is somehow accessible through verbal self report measures
self-report cognition is often assessed retrospectively, assuming that individuals can accurately represent cognitions they’ve experienced in the past
cognitive scientists reject this approach and favour performance-based measures that sample cognitive processes DIRECTLY
thus our understanding of cognitive distortions are sharply limited due to the methods used to assess them
