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Reaction Times to Appearance-Related or Non-appearance-Related Word Choice Among Women With and Without Eating Psychopathology

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Abstract

Activation of schemas related to one’s appearance has been studied extensively using implicit tasks such as the word stem completion task and the Stoop paradigm. The current study utilized a word stem completion task adapted for presentation on a Personal Data Assistant to examine differences in reaction times to appearance- and non-appearance-related words. Participants were 93 undergraduate women, 30 of whom met criteria for eating psychopathology utilizing the diagnostic algorithm for the Eating Disorder Diagnostic Scale (Stice et al. in Psychol Assess 12:123–131. doi:10.1037/1040-3590.12.2.123, 2000). The remaining 63 participants served as a comparison group. A significant interaction effect indicated that women with eating pathology exhibited significantly longer reaction times when selecting the appearance-related words than those without eating psychopathology. This research introduces a novel method of measuring reaction time to appearance- and non-appearance-related words and demonstrates the relevance of appearance schematicity in the naturalistic environment by showing that these schemas have the potential to impact the way young women process schema-relevant information on a day-to-day basis.

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Conflict of Interest

Taryn A. Myers, Danielle R. Ridolfi, Janis H. Crowther declare that they have no conflict of interest.

Informed Consent

All procedures followed were in accordance with the ethical standards of the responsible committee on human experimentation (institutional and national) and with the Helsinki Declaration of 1975, as revised in 2000 (5). Informed consent was obtained from all participants for being included in the study.

Animal Rights

No animal studies were carried out by the authors for this article.

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Author notes

  1. Taryn A. Myers

    Present address: Department of Psychology, Virginia Wesleyan College, Norfolk, VA, 23502, USA

  2. Danielle R. Ridolfi

    Present address: Department of Psychiatry, Washington University in St. Louis, St. Louis, MO, USA

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychology, Kent State University, Kent, OH, USA

    Taryn A. Myers, Danielle R. Ridolfi & Janis H. Crowther

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  1. Taryn A. Myers
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Correspondence to Taryn A. Myers.

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Myers, T.A., Ridolfi, D.R. & Crowther, J.H. Reaction Times to Appearance-Related or Non-appearance-Related Word Choice Among Women With and Without Eating Psychopathology. Cogn Ther Res 39, 204–214 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10608-014-9653-5

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