eating behaviors key terms

Question 1

Anorexia nervosa

Answer 1

is an eating disorder characterized by an abnormally low body weight, an intense fear of gaining weight and a distorted perception of weight.

Question 2

Enmeshment

Answer 2

a condition in which two or more people, typically family members, are involved in each other’s activities and personal relationships to an excessive degree, thus limiting or precluding healthy interaction and compromising individual autonomy and identity.

Question 3

Dual control theory

Answer 3

The body has evolved two systems for achieving this, one of which turns eating ‘on’ and one for turning it ‘off’. For humans, glucose levels likely play a significant role in producing feelings of hunger as hunger increases as glucose levels decrease.

Question 4

Ghrelin

Answer 4

Ghrelin is a hormone that is known as an appetite increaser. It is released in the stomach and stimulates the hypothalamus to increase appetite.

Question 5

Leptin

Answer 5

Leptin is a hormone, known as the ‘satiety hormone’, because it plays an important role in appetite and weight control. it decreases appetite.

Question 6

Acculturalisation

Answer 6

the adoption of cultural traits. Dietary acculturation is the process by which a migrating group adopts the dietary patterns and food choices of their new cultural environment.

Question 7

Restraint theory

Answer 7

suggests that human eating behaviour is under cognitive control and this leads to reduced sensitivity to internal cues for satiety, resulting in overeating in situations where cognitive control is under-mined

Question 8

Disinhibition

Answer 8

the tendency to overeat in response to negative emotional states or the presence of highly palatable foods

Question 9

Bodily dysmorphia

Answer 9

a mental health condition where a person spends a lot of time worrying about flaws in their appearance.

Question 10

adapted to flee hypothesis

Answer 10

suggests that symptoms of AN (such as hyperactivity and restriction of eating) enabled migration during famines to reach areas with more abundant food

Question 11

Neophobia

Answer 11

a persistent and irrational fear of change or of anything new, unfamiliar, or strange

Question 12

Taste aversion

Answer 12

a learned response to eating food that is toxic, poisonous spoiled, or poisonous.

Question 13

Herman and Mack (1974)

Answer 13

proposed the restraint theory. showed that restraint actually led to overeating. person thinks that they may as well continue eating once they have started.

Question 14

Wegner (1987)

Answer 14

found that attempting to suppress thoughts made them more likely to surface. this was called the ironic process theory

Question 15

Lashley (1938)

Answer 15

He discovered how vital the role of the hypothalamus is in playing a part in the regulating of food intake. In particular, the LH was identified as the main hunger centre and the VMH as the main satiety centre.

Question 16

Zhang (1994)

Answer 16

found that leptin had a function and that it was a fat-derived hormone that regulates feeding behaviour and body weight.

Question 17

Garcia (1975)

Answer 17

who found that rats that had been made ill through radiation shortly after eating saccharin developed an aversion to it. Being able to quickly develop taste aversions increases the chances of an animal or human surviving, reproducing and passing on their genes to their offspring.

Question 18

Bell (1973)

Answer 18

found a preference for sweetness by researching the native people of alaska who had no experience of sweet foods or drinks but didnt reject them displaying an innate preference for sugar

Question 19

Bruch (1971)

Answer 19

suggests that anorexia is caused by the adolescent daughter’s struggle to achieve the autonomy & control she wants – mother is domineering, intrusive, discourages separation & doesn’t accept her daughter’s need for independence

Question 20

Minchin (1978)

Answer 20

They developed the psychosomatic family model, which states that dysfunctional families (e.g. those characterised by enmeshment) can trigger anorexia nervosa in a child who is already physiologically vulnerable.

Question 21

Becker (2002)

Answer 21

Key indicators of disordered eating were significantly more prevalent following exposure. Narrative data revealed subjects’ interest in weight loss as a means of modelling themselves after television characters.

Question 22

Holland (1986)

Answer 22

9/16 of the monozygotic (MZ) and 1/14 of the dizygotic (DZ) pairs were concordant for anorexia nervosa. None of the male co-twins had anorexia nervosa.

Question 23

Bailer (2007)

Answer 23

found significantly higher serotonin activity in women who showed most anxiety – persistent disruption of serotonin levels may lead to increased anxiety, which many trigger AN

Question 24

Kaye (2005)

Answer 24

found overactivity in dopamine receptors in the basal ganglia to be linked to anorexia nervosa.