The aim of the present study was to investigate an attentional bias toward food stimuli in binge eating disorder (BED). To this end, a BED and a weight-matched control group (CG) completed a clarification task and a spatial cueing paradigm. The clarification task revealed that food stimuli were faster detected than neutral stimuli, and that this difference was more pronounced in BED than in the CG. The spatial cueing paradigm indicated a stimulus engagement effect in the BED group but not in the CG, suggesting that an early locus in stimulus processing contributes to differences between BED patients and obese controls. Both groups experienced difficulty disengaging attention from food stimuli, and this effect was only descriptively larger in the BED group. The effects obtained in both paradigms were found to be correlated with reported severity of BED symptoms. Of note, this relationship was partially mediated by the arousal associated with food stimuli relative to neutral stimuli, as predicted by an account on incentive sensitization.
Keywords: Attentional bias; Binge eating disorder; Stimulus disengagement; Stimulus engagement; arousal; food cues.
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