The development of emotional go/no-go task to measure behavioral impulsivity in eating disorder patients

Abstract

Impulsivity and emotional bias related to disorder specific stimuli could be potential targets in the treatment of eating disorders (ED). The primary goal of this study was to develop an emotional Go/No-Go task which would reflect behavioral impulsivity in ED patients and would also demonstrate attention bias to food and body related stimuli. For the purpose of this study two versions of emotional Go/No-Go task were developed. Results with the initial version of emotional Go/No-Go task showed slower reaction times (RTs) in bulimia nervosa (BN) patients which were positively associated with the making of commission errors. Also in the initial version BN patients showed attention bias in body related stimuli. After the modification of the emotional Go/No-Go task which included improving the stimuli material on the basis of emotionality and adding more blocks to the task, either of the ED groups did not exhibit higher behavioral impulsivity. Patterns of correlations with other impulsivity measures indicated that the modified emotional Go/No-Go task rather captured the attention difficulties than behavioral impulsivity. In conclusion for the measurement of behavioral impulsivity the shorter version of the task should be used with additional improvement of stimuli material to reflect specific emotional bias in ED patients to food and body related stimuli.