Special Series: Current Perspectives On Implicit Cognitive Processing In Clinical Disorders: Implications For Assessment And Intervention
Implicit cognitions and eating disorders: Their application in research and treatment*

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Cognitive theory has had a prominent role in understanding and treating eating disorders in recent years. The increasing emphasis on implicit cognitions in many areas of psychology raises the question of whether research on implicit cognitions could contribute to our understanding and treatment of eating disorders. In the present article, we discuss our recent work using the Implicit Association Test (IAT; Greenwald, McGhee, & Schwartz, 1998) to explore implicit cognitions in restrained and unrestrained eaters. We also propose several domains in which exploring the utility of the IAT may prove beneficial. These include cognitive restructuring, inaccuracies in self-report, predicting relapse, body dissatisfaction, and treatment selection. Although there are numerous potential applications of the IAT for research and clinical practice with eating disorders, the value of these applications must be tested empirically.

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  • Cited by (33)

    • What is restrained eating and how do we identify it?

      2020, Appetite
      Citation Excerpt :

      Thus, an implicit test such as the IAT may provide a nonreactive measure of thoughts and beliefs that might overcome the problems of self-reports. Our work using the IAT to try to discriminate between the attitudes of restrained and unrestrained eaters has not been encouraging (Vartanian, Herman, & Polivy, 2005; Vartanian, Polivy, & Herman, 2004). Restrained and unrestrained eaters had strong but equivalent automatic associations between meal-size and body-size words (i.e., connecting small meals with thinness-related words and larger meals with fatness-related words).

    • Transcranial magnetic stimulation of medial prefrontal cortex modulates implicit attitudes towards food

      2015, Appetite
      Citation Excerpt :

      Using the IAT, Cockerham et al., 2009 found significant differences in self-esteem between patients with bulimia nervosa or binge eating disorders and healthy controls and Rudolph and Hilbert (2014) showed good correlations between a self-discrimination IAT and body mass index, experiences of weight stigma and depressive symptoms in binge eating disorders and obesity. These studies supported the feasibility of the IAT to measure different constructs in clinical eating disorders and to improve understanding of predictive and explanatory aspects of the psychopathology (Vartanian, Polivy, & Herman, 2004). In the light of our results on individual differences in response to TMS during the IAT, it would be of interest for the future research to combine IAT and TMS treatment in clinical populations.

    • Implicit cognitive processes in binge-eating disorder and obesity

      2014, Journal of Behavior Therapy and Experimental Psychiatry
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    Preparation of this manuscript was supported by grants from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.

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