Cognitive overcontrol as a trait marker in anorexia nervosa? Aberrant task- and response-set switching in remitted patients.
Individuals with anorexia nervosa (AN) often present inflexible behaviors and rigid thinking styles, which may contribute to disorder maintenance. Studies of set shifting have documented impairments in AN, but results have varied across samples. Moreover, the hypothesis that deficient set shifting may constitute an endophenotype rests largely on observations made with neuropsychological tests with limited ability to isolate component cognitive control processes. The current behavioral study used a task switching paradigm with a demonstrated ability to fractionate the hierarchical organization underlying task- and response-set shifting in 22 weight-recovered women with a history of AN (recAN) relative to 22 age-matched healthy controls. Whereas recAN performed generally more accurately than healthy controls, they also responded more slowly. Despite slower performance, however, recAN error rates did not exhibit the characteristic improvement in task switching on trials with a concurrent response switch-an interaction thought to index efficient action sequencing and the hierarchical control of behavior. These results were not mediated by comorbid symptoms, but no relationships with clinical measures were detected. Inefficient set shifting in AN may be related to a general tendency to sustain a high level of cognitive control (as evident here in a robust speed-accuracy trade-off), which interferes with context-sensitive regulation of processing priorities (as evident here in an atypical interaction between task and response switching). Although scarring effects cannot be excluded and the generalizability of our findings needs to be tested, the current observations in recAN provide novel evidence that altered set shifting may be a trait marker of the disorder. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).
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Related Subject Headings
- Young Adult
- Neuropsychological Tests
- Humans
- Female
- Cognition Disorders
- Clinical Psychology
- Anorexia Nervosa
- Adult
- Adolescent
- 5204 Cognitive and computational psychology
Citation
Published In
DOI
EISSN
ISSN
Publication Date
Volume
Issue
Start / End Page
Related Subject Headings
- Young Adult
- Neuropsychological Tests
- Humans
- Female
- Cognition Disorders
- Clinical Psychology
- Anorexia Nervosa
- Adult
- Adolescent
- 5204 Cognitive and computational psychology