TY - JOUR
T1 - Impaired configural body processing in anorexia nervosa
T2 - Evidence from the body inversion effect
AU - Urgesi, Cosimo
AU - Fornasari, Livia
AU - Canalaz, Francesca
AU - Perini, Laura
AU - Cremaschi, Silvana
AU - Faleschini, Laura
AU - Thyrion, Erica Zappoli
AU - Zuliani, Martina
AU - Balestrieri, Matteo
AU - Fabbro, Franco
AU - Brambilla, Paolo
PY - 2014
Y1 - 2014
N2 - Patients with anorexia nervosa (AN) suffer from severe disturbances of body perception. It is unclear, however, whether such disturbances are linked to specific alterations in the processing of body configurations with respect to the local processing of body part details. Here, we compared a consecutive sample of 12 AN patients with a group of 12 age-, gender- and education-matched controls using an inversion effect paradigm requiring the visual discrimination of upright and inverted pictures of whole bodies, faces and objects. The AN patients presented selective deficits in the discrimination of upright body stimuli, which requires configural processing. Conversely, patients and controls showed comparable abilities in the discrimination of inverted bodies, which involves only detail-based processing, and in the discrimination of both upright and inverted faces and objects. Importantly, the body inversion effect negatively correlated with the persistence scores at the Temperament and Character Inventory, which evaluates increased tendency to convert a signal of punishment into a signal of reinforcement. These results suggest that the deficits of configural processing in AN patients may be associated with their obsessive worries about body appearance and to the excessive attention to details that characterizes their general perceptual style.
AB - Patients with anorexia nervosa (AN) suffer from severe disturbances of body perception. It is unclear, however, whether such disturbances are linked to specific alterations in the processing of body configurations with respect to the local processing of body part details. Here, we compared a consecutive sample of 12 AN patients with a group of 12 age-, gender- and education-matched controls using an inversion effect paradigm requiring the visual discrimination of upright and inverted pictures of whole bodies, faces and objects. The AN patients presented selective deficits in the discrimination of upright body stimuli, which requires configural processing. Conversely, patients and controls showed comparable abilities in the discrimination of inverted bodies, which involves only detail-based processing, and in the discrimination of both upright and inverted faces and objects. Importantly, the body inversion effect negatively correlated with the persistence scores at the Temperament and Character Inventory, which evaluates increased tendency to convert a signal of punishment into a signal of reinforcement. These results suggest that the deficits of configural processing in AN patients may be associated with their obsessive worries about body appearance and to the excessive attention to details that characterizes their general perceptual style.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=84908142600&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=84908142600&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1111/bjop.12057
DO - 10.1111/bjop.12057
M3 - Article
C2 - 24206365
AN - SCOPUS:84908142600
VL - 105
SP - 486
EP - 508
JO - The British journal of psychology. General section
JF - The British journal of psychology. General section
SN - 0373-2460
IS - 4
ER -