Affect, Mind-Body Factors, and Eating Behaviors: Examining Naturalistic Associations among Female Young Adults with Eating Disorder Symptoms

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Project Summary/Abstract Eating disorders (EDs) are debilitating mental illnesses that are associated with heightened mortality risk and morbidity. Disconcertingly, over half of individuals who receive empirically-supported ED treatments remain symptomatic, a limitation theorized to stem from most ED treatments’ lack of or peripheral emphasis on factors purported to underlie the onset and maintenance of EDs, including deficits in: (1) interoception; (2) mindfulness; (3) emotion regulation (i.e., mind-body factors). Of note, existing empirical work and my research with young women indirectly support the intermediary role of these three mind-body factors within established relationships between affect and eating behavior. Yet, to date, the mind-body factors have not been explicitly assessed as mediators or moderators of relationships between affect and adults with ED symptoms’ use of both disordered (i.e., ED) and health-promoting eating behaviors (i.e., intuitive eating [IE], eating based on physical hunger and satiety cues) via ecological momentary assessment (EMA) and psychophysiological methods. The proposed study will address these gaps among female young adults with subclinical and clinical ED symptoms (N = 237), who will complete lab-based and EMA tasks. Lab-based tasks will include: (1) a baseline survey assessing trait-levels of affect, the mind-body factors, and eating behaviors; (2) an ECG heartbeat perception task with concurrent measures of EEG heartbeat-evoked brain potentials (objective measures of interoception). Participants will then complete surveys on smartphones for a 14-day EMA period that target state-levels of affect, the mind-body factors, and eating behaviors. Notably, the lab-based component will allow us to strengthen the validity of inferences made about affect, mind-body factor, eating behavior associations via use of multimodal assessment; use of EMA will allow us to answer novel research questions about the temporal sequencing of these associations in daily life. The proposed study will address two Aims: (1) Examine whether the mind-body factors mediate and/or moderate associations between differentially valenced affective experiences, and use of ED and IE behaviors in daily life; (2) Examine whether distinct interoception dimensions moderate associations between mindfulness and emotion dysregulation, and ED vs. IE behavior use in daily life. This research can identify viable prevention and treatment targets for EDs that, in line with the NIMH’s Strategic Objective 3 (Strive for Prevention and Cures), may not only help young women with ED symptoms decrease adverse health behaviors (i.e., ED behaviors) but become well (i.e., by increasing IE behaviors). By conducting this research and training plan, the applicant will develop competencies integral to the central aim of her training: to establish an independent research lab at an academic institution that seeks to improve the understanding of factors implicated in the pathogenesis of EDs, with the long-term goal of enhancing ED treatment efficacy.