Eating disorder pathology among overweight treatment-seeking youth: clinical correlates and cross-sectional risk modeling

Preliminary research suggests that pediatric overweight is associated with increased eating disorder pathology, however, little is known about which overweight youth are most vulnerable to eating disorder pathology. We therefore investigated 122 overweight treatment-seeking youth to describe eating disorder pathology and mental health correlates, and to identify psychopathological constructs that may place overweight youth at increased risk for eating disorder pathology. Youth participated in a comprehensive assessment of eating disorders, mood and anxiety disorders, general psychopathology, and risk variables involving semi-structured clinical interviews and self- and parent-report questionnaires prior to the initiation of weight-loss treatment. Ten youth met criteria for an eating disorder, and over one-third endorsed recent binge eating. Eating disorder pathology was associated with depressive and anxious symptoms (p's<0.001). Structural equation modeling indicated increased negative affect, teasing experience, and thin-ideal internalization, and decreased perfectionism were associated with increased eating disorder pathology. Findings corroborate earlier work indicating that eating disorder pathology is elevated and clinically significant in overweight treatment-seeking youth, bolstering the need for mental health assessment of such individuals. Cross-sectional modeling proposed key variables that relate to eating disorder pathology in overweight treatment-seeking youth, which following prospective replication, may inform the development of effective interventions for overweight and eating disorders.     

Semantic similarity dissociates short- from long-term recency effects: Testing a neurocomputational model of list memory

The finding that recency effects can occur not only in immediate free recall (i.e., short-term recency) but also in the continuous-distractor task (ie., long-term recency) has led many theorists to reject the distinction between short- and long-term memory stores. Recently, we have argued that long-term recency effects do not undermine the concept of a short-term store, and we have presented a neurocomputational model that accounts for both short- and long-term recency and for a series of dissociations between these two effects. Here, we present a new dissociation between short- and long-term recency based on semantic similarity, which is predicted by our model. This dissociation is due to the mutual support between associated items in the short-term store, which takes place in immediate free recall and delayed free recall but not in continuous-distractor free recall.     

Imagination inflation: a statistical artifact of regression toward the mean

In the imagination inflation procedure of Garry, Manning, Loftus, and Sherman (1996), subjects rated a list of events in terms of how likely each was to have occurred in their childhood. Two weeks later, some of the events were imagined; control events were not. The subjects then rated the likelihood of occurrence for each event a second time. Garry et al. (1996) reported that the act of imagining the target events led to increased ratings of likelihood. This finding has been interpreted as indicating that false events can be suggestively planted in memory by simply having people imagine them. The present study tests and confirms the hypothesis that the results that have been attributed to imagination inflation are simply a statistical artifact of regression toward the mean. The experiment of Garry et al. (1996) was reproduced (with some procedural changes), using younger and older adults. The results of Garry et al. (1996) were replicated; likelihood ratings for events initially rated low in likelihood did increase from Time 1 to Time 2. However, ratings for events initially rated high in likelihood decreased under the same conditions, and these results were consistent with the imagined target events, the target events not imagined, and the nontarget events.     

The influence of significant others on attitudes, subjective norms and intentions regarding dietary supplement use among adolescent athletes

Dietary supplement use has increased significantly over the past decade. The use of supplements among adolescents seems to be influenced by their beliefs and attitudes. The influence of coaches, parents, and athletic trainers also may be important. The purpose of this study was (1) to determine whether attitudes are a better predictor of adolescents' intentions to use dietary supplements than are subjective norms, and (2) to assess the influence of significant others (coaches, parents, and trainers) on attitudes, subjective norms, and intentions among adolescent athletes. Adolescents (N = 1,626) who were enrolled in grades six through twelve in nine public schools completed a self-report questionnaire that measured attitudes, subjective norms, and intentions regarding dietary supplement use. Results indicated that attitudes were a better predictor of intentions to use dietary supplements than were subjective norms. It was also found that trainers had more influence on the attitudes, subjective norms, and intentions of adolescents regarding supplement use than did parents and coaches. Implications for prevention are addressed.     

Explaining Away Incompatibilist Intuitions

The debate between compatibilists and incompatibilists depends in large part on what ordinary people mean by ‘free will’, a matter on which previous experimental philosophy studies have yielded conflicting results. In Nahmias, Morris, Nadelhoffer, and Turner (2005, 2006) , most participants judged that agents in deterministic scenarios could have free will and be morally responsible. Nichols and Knobe (2007) , though, suggest that these apparent compatibilist responses are performance errors produced by using concrete scenarios, and that their abstract scenarios reveal the folk theory of free will for what it actually is—incompatibilist. Here, we argue that the results of two new studies suggest just the opposite. Most participants only give apparent incompatibilist judgments when they mistakenly interpret determinism to imply that agents’ mental states are bypassed in the causal chains that lead to their behavior. Determinism does not entail bypassing, so these responses do not reflect genuine incompatibilist intuitions. When participants understand what determinism does mean, the vast majority take it to be compatible with free will. Further results indicate that most people’s concepts of choice and the ability to do otherwise do not commit them to incompatibilism, either, putting pressure on incompatibilist arguments that rely on transfer principles, such as the Consequence Argument. We discuss the implications of these findings for philosophical debates about free will, and suggest that incompatibilism appears to be either false, or else a thesis about something other than what most people mean by ‘free will’.     

A habituation account of change detection in same/different judgments

We investigated the basis of change detection in a short-term priming task. In two experiments, participants were asked to indicate whether or not a target word was the same as a previously presented cue. Data from an experiment measuring magnetoencephalography failed to find different patterns for “same” and “different” responses, consistent with the claim that both arise from a common neural source, with response magnitude defining the difference between immediate novelty versus familiarity. In a behavioral experiment, we tested and confirmed the predictions of a habituation account of these judgments by comparing conditions in which the target, the cue, or neither was primed by its presentation in the previous trial. As predicted, cue-primed trials had faster response times, and target-primed trials had slower response times relative to the neither-primed baseline. These results were obtained irrespective of response repetition and stimulus–response contingencies. The behavioral and brain activity data support the view that detection of change drives performance in these tasks and that the underlying mechanism is neuronal habituation.     

Overvaluation of shape and weight among overweight children and adolescents with loss of control eating

Little is known about the phenomenology of pediatric loss of control (LOC) eating. Overvaluation of shape and weight, however, appears to be diagnostically meaningful among binge eating adults. We explored the significance of shape and weight overvaluation among children and adolescents with LOC eating. Participants (n = 526) included 149 overweight youth with LOC eating and 377 overweight controls (CON). Participants were categorized as those reporting at least moderate overvaluation (LOC-Mod, n = 74; CON-Mod, n = 106) or less than moderate overvaluation (LOC-Low, n = 75; CON-Low, n = 271), and compared on measures of eating-related and general psychopathology. LOC-Mod evidenced lower self-esteem than CON-Low, and greater behavioral problems than CON-Mod and CON-Low, but did not differ from LOC-Low in these domains. With the exception of LOC-Low and CON-Mod, all groups differed on global eating-disorder severity, with LOC-Mod scoring the highest. Overvaluation of shape and weight appears to be of questionable importance in defining subtypes of youth with LOC eating. However, as overvaluation and LOC eating each independently predicts eating-disorder onset, their confluence may confer even further risk for eating-disorder development. Longitudinal studies should address this possibility. Developmentally appropriate discussion about body image disturbance may be indicated in interventions targeting pediatric LOC eating and/or obesity.     

Joint Trajectories of Symptoms of Disruptive Behavior Problems and Depressive Symptoms During Early Adolescence and Adjustment Problems During Emerging Adulthood

The joint, longitudinal trajectories of symptoms of disruptive behavior problems and of depression were examined in a community sample drawn from neighborhoods with elevated rates of delinquency. Growth mixture modeling was applied to a 6?year transition period from childhood to adolescence, age 10 to 16?years, to identify latent classes of trajectories for each symptom type. Several classes emerged for the two types of symptoms, namely a group of youth with high levels of disruptive behavior, a group with increasing levels, and a group with low levels, as well as a group with increasing levels of depression, a group with high levels, a group with decreasing levels, and a group with low levels. Within each symptom type, membership in either the high or in the increasing classes was related to a variety of problematic outcomes during emerging adulthood. The co-occurrence of the disruptive behavior and depression classes was then evaluated using parallel process analysis. Youth exhibiting high depressive symptoms were at increased risk for disruptive behavior problems, and youth with increasing disruptive behavior problems were at risk for depressive symptoms. However, only a very small number of youth had both a high depression trajectory and a high disruptive behavior trajectory. Implications of the findings for the design of prevention and treatment programs are discussed.