Cognitive Flexibility In Subclinical Populations With Eating Disorders: Partial Mediation Of Anxiety

Objective: Cognitive flexibility is the ability to transform cognitive perspectives at the same or different cognitive activities.Experimental results showed that compared with the normal control group,patients with eating disorders had insufficient or inefficient cognitive flexibility,and it was related to repetitive symptoms of persistent poor eating.This study investigated the characteristics of cognitive flexibility in college students with subclinical eating disorders,and discussed the relationship with abnormal eating behavior.Methods: Totally 211 college students in Shanghai were selected to compl ete Cognitive Flexibility Inventory(CFI),Obsessive-Compulsive Inventory-Revi sed(OCI-R),Eating Disorder Examination Questionnaire(EDE–Q)to evaluate Eat ing behaviors,and Generalized Anxiety Disorder-7(GAD-7)to evaluate emotion.In addition,this study hypothesized that emotions play a mediating role in th e prediction of abnormal feeding in cognitive flexibility.Study 2 based on first study,according to EDE-Q demarcation points(grouping total score > 1.27 as subclinical ED group),selected 60 college students in study 1 and then were divided into control group(n = 32),the subclinical group(n = 28),and used behavioral tests like Trial Making Test(TMT)and the Stroop Word-Color Te st(SWCT)to assess cognitive flexibility,to comparing the differences between the two groups on the cognitive flexibility.Results: A significantly negative correlation between the total score of EDE-Q and the CFI control(r=-0.2,p<0.01),and the OCI-R frequency(r= 0.15,p<0.05).Mediation effect analysis results suggested that control of cognitive flexibility is significantly relate abnormal eating(?=-0.05,t=-2.9,p=0.004),GAD-7 shows partial mediation effect,effect size is 0.29.The experimental group and the control group differed in CFI control however,did not differ in the reaction time or conversion time of the Stroop test and the TMT test.Meanwihle EDE-Q restrictive diet dimension significantly correlated with SWCT-A(r = 0.44,p < 0.44),the SWCT-B(r = 0.46,p < 0.46),color SIE(r = 0.36,p < 0.01),and so as to TMT-B(r = 0.42,p < 0.01),the TMT B-A(r = 0.33,p < 0.01)and TMT B/A(r = 0.27,p < 0.05)were significantly positive correlation,.Conclusion: The results suggested that abnormal eating was associated with lower cognitive flexibility and higher compulsive traits,and anxiety shows partial mediation effect in the negative predictive of cognitive flexibility to abnormal eating.Compared with the normal group,experiment group reported lower cognitive flexibility control and more anxiety,but the neuropsychological testing showed no difference.At the same time,the abnormal feeding scale and behavior,the correlation analysis of the test results indicate abnormal eating high individual with lower cognitive flexibility,the results of this study suggest the cognitive flexibility in the early development of eating disorders play a role in the process.