Interoceptive Sensitivity Deficits And Attentional Bias In Female Restrained Eaters

In recent years, with the rapid development of domestic economy, high calorie food is easy to obtain in daily life, and the overweight of adolescent boys and girls become a serious problem, which is can not be ignored for physical and mental health.On the influence of western culture and the mass media, more and more young women pursue “thin” ideal body size, so they began to strictly restrict eating behavior, in order to control their own weight. Many studies show that restricted eating could predict the strength of eating disorders, it is an important predictor of bulimic symptoms, and it also plays an important role in the development of eating disorders. Meanwhile,restricted eating will threaten physical and mental health. For example, restricted eating is associated with negative emotions(anxiety) and unhealthy behaviors(smoking). Therefore it is necessary to carry out systematic studies of restricted eating,find characteristics of restricted eaters, enrich theories of restricted eating, and provide treatment for eating disorders.Boundary theory suggests that there are two different physiological boundary to regulate eating behavior in non-restricted eaters, namely starvation boundary and satiety boundary. However, restricted eaters often ignore the internal hunger or satiety signal and artificially set a cognitive boundary(dieting boundary) to control their food intake. In the long-term regulation of dieting boundary, restricted eaters are gradually insensitive to hunger and satiety. Once this mechanism has been destroyed, diet boundary can not control food intake, which will lead to overeating. Related studies have found that restricted eaters are insensitive to the internal physiological cues of hunger and fullness. Because the perception of hunger and satiety belong to interoception, interoceptive sensitivity of restricted eaters may become attenuated. The heartbeat perception task show that interoceptive sensitivity deficits in womenrecovered from bulimia nervosa, anorexia nervosa, overweight and obese individuals.Therefore, it is necessary to directly examine the perception of bodily signal in restricted dieters through the heartbeat perception task. If the perception of internal signal reduced in restricted dieters, what the causes of this phenomenon are?According to boundary theory, restrictive dieters dependent on external food cues, and insensitive to hunger and satiety internal physiological cues. And the competition of cues model sates that internal sensory cues and external environmental cues will compete for the limited cognitive resources. Based on these viewpoints, the present study assumes that attentional bias to food cues of restricted dieters result in the neglect of internal physiological cues, which leads to the reduced interoceptive sensitivity.In Study 1, we examined whether interoceptive sensitivity deficits in restrictive dieters. Following the single factor(restrictive dieter vs. non-restrictive dieter)experimental design, 68 female undergraduates(35 restrictive dieter and 33non-restrictive dieter) completed the heartbeat perception task. Results showed that compared to the non restrictive dieters, interoceptive sensitivity of restricted dieters significantly reduced; then a hierarchical regression analysis showed that restrained eating significantly predicted interoceptive sensitivity after controlling for age, BMI,satiation, hunger and emotion. This finding conforms to boundary theory that restricted dieters are insensitive to internal physiological signals.In Study 2, we investigated whether restricted dieter have attentional bias for food cues, and tested the relationship between attentional bias and interoceptive sensitivity.Following 2(restraint: restrained vs. unrestrained) * 2(probe location: congruent vs.incongruent) experimental design, with the first factor varying between participants and the latter factor within participants, 68 female undergraduates(35 restrictive dieter and 33 non-restrictive dieter) participated in a visual probe task and heartbeat perception task. We found no significant difference in attentional bias between restrictive dieter and non-restrictive dieter, and the correlation coefficient between attentional bias and restrained eating was also non-significant.The present study demonstrates that the perception of bodily signal has reduced in restrained eaters, which is the first time to examine interoceptive sensitivity of restricted dieters by using the heartbeat perception task. Theoretically, this result provides more experimental evidence for boundary theory. Practically, the present study guide us how to develop healthier eating habits, such as using intuitive eatinginstead of restrained eating, which is of great significance to develop more effective intervention of eating disorders.