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. 2020 Oct;25(5):1225-1233.
doi: 10.1007/s40519-019-00755-z. Epub 2019 Jul 27.

Selective attentional bias to food-related stimuli in healthy individuals with characteristics towards orthorexia nervosa

Ian P Albery  1 , Monika Michalska  2 , Antony C Moss  2 , Marcantonio Spada  2
Affiliations
Free PMC article

Selective attentional bias to food-related stimuli in healthy individuals with characteristics towards orthorexia nervosa

Ian P Albery et al. Eat Weight Disord. 2020 Oct.
Free PMC article

Abstract

Purpose: It has been argued that orthorexia nervosa (ON) is a unique type of disordered eating of food considered by the individual to be healthy. Given that in other eating disorder populations attentional preference for food-related cues influences eating behaviours, is it also likely that these biases may be a characteristic of ON tendency.

Methods: Eighty healthy individuals completed the ORTO-15 questionnaire (ON tendency), a modified Stroop task containing words related to healthy and unhealthy foods and perceived hunger levels pre- and post-testing. The ORTO-15 was used to identify participants within this sample who demonstrated more or less of the characteristics of ON.

Results: Results suggest that the presence of attentional bias to healthy, but not for unhealthy food-related stimuli independently predict increased ON tendency. Increased attentional bias towards healthy food-related stimuli is associated with increased scores on the ORTO-15.

Conclusion: Attentional bias, as a deficit in information processing, towards healthy food-related stimuli accounts for variability in ON characteristics.

Level of evidence: Level I, experimental study.

Keywords: Attentional bias; ORTO-15; Orthorexia nervosa; Stroop-task.

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Conflict of interest statement

We declare that we do not have any commercial or associative interest that represents a conflict of interest in connection with the work submitted.

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