Difficulties in social and emotional processing appear to play a role in the psychopathology of eating disorders (ED). Theoretical models describe how problems in social and emotional processing are related to the development and maintenance of the illness. The findings from previous systematic reviews and meta-analyses show that individuals with ED have difficulties in multiple aspects of social and emotional processing. A comprehensive review of social processing in ED presented in this thesis lends further support for the presence of difficulties with social and emotional processing in suffers with ED. However, much of the data in this area were gathered from self-report, which is subject to bias. The aim of this thesis was to examine the relationship between ED status and several aspects of social and emotional processing and to consider these findings in relation to the Cognitive Interpersonal Maintenance Model of the illness (C-IMM; Schmidt & Treasure, 2006). Four empirical studies focused on measuring several aspects of social and emotional processing in women with ED using both experimental and behavioural measures. The first study examined the role of implicit negative self-concept in women with Anorexia Nervosa (AN) compared to healthy women. The second study investigated attentional response, identification of others’ emotion, subjective emotional response and facial expression towards the emotional displays of happiness, sadness and frustration in women with ED compared to healthy women. The third study examined maternal sensitivity to infant cues of happiness, sadness and frustration in women with ED compared to women without ED during late pregnancy. Finally, the fourth study examined newborn behaviour and mother-to-infant bonding during postpartum in women with ED compared to women without ED who were part of the same cohort of participants as in the third study. Overall the findings suggest that ED status is linked with specific rather than general anomalies in social and emotional processing. Women with ED had less facial expressivity towards displays of happiness in adults and infants. Women with ED underestimated happiness in infants. They experienced an amplified feeling of negative affect in response to infant sadness. Newborn infants of mothers with a current ED were more sensitive to environmental stress than newborns of mothers without ED. The strengths and limitations of these studies were considered and directions for future work were proposed in the context of the C-IMM of ED (Schmidt & Treasure, 2006). The clinical implications of the thesis were discussed in relation to treatment for these anomalies in social and emotional processing.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bl.uk/oai:ethos.bl.uk:677055 |
| Date | January 2014 |
| Creators | Corfield, Freya Anwen |
| Contributors | Treasure, Janet Linda ; Micali, Nadia |
| Publisher | King's College London (University of London) |
| Source Sets | Ethos UK |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Source | http://kclpure.kcl.ac.uk/portal/en/theses/attachment-affect-and-social-processing-in-eating-disorders(b1bf7238-deed-4cc0-a15b-4e475ea64f50).html |
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