Prospective associations between childhood social communication processes and adolescent eating disorder symptoms in an
- PDF / 812,640 Bytes
- 10 Pages / 595.276 x 790.866 pts Page_size
- 73 Downloads / 189 Views
ORIGINAL CONTRIBUTION
Prospective associations between childhood social communication processes and adolescent eating disorder symptoms in an epidemiological sample Katherine Schaumberg1 · Stephanie C. Zerwas2 · Cynthia M. Bulik2,3,4 · Chiara Fiorentini5 · Nadia Micali5,6,7 Received: 30 March 2020 / Accepted: 25 September 2020 © Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature 2020
Abstract Deficits in social cognition and communication, the processes associated with human social behavior and interaction, have been described in individuals with eating disorder psychopathology. The current study examined whether social communication characteristics present in middle childhood (ages 8–14) were associated with eating disorder behaviors, cognitions, and diagnoses across adolescence (ages 14–18) in a large, population-based sample. Participants (N = 4864) were children enrolled in the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children (ALSPAC), a population-based, prospective study of women and their children. Regression methods tested prospective associations between social functioning using a facial emotion recognition task and parentally reported social communication symptoms (or difficulties), measured by the Social Communication Disorder Checklist (SCDC), with eating disorder symptoms and diagnoses. Misattribution of faces as sad or angry at age 8.5 was associated with purging and anorexia nervosa diagnosis at age 14, respectively, among girls. Furthermore, autistic-like social communication difficulties during middle childhood were associated with bulimia nervosa symptoms during adolescence among both girls and boys. Results did not support global associations between measured social communication deficits and eating disorder risk in this sample, but specific difficulties with facial emotion recognition and social communication may enhance the risk for disordered eating behaviors. Keywords ALSPAC · Social communication · Eating disorder
Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (https://doi.org/10.1007/s00787-020-01655-9) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. * Katherine Schaumberg [email protected] 1
Department of Psychiatry, University of Wisconsin, 6001 Research Park Blvd, Madison, WI 53719, USA
2
Department of Psychiatry, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, USA
3
Department of Nutrition, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, USA
4
Department of Medical Epidemiology and Biostatistics, Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, Sweden
5
Department of Psychiatry, Faculty of Medicine, University of Geneva, Geneva, Switzerland
6
Department of Psychiatry, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York City, USA
7
Institute of Child Health, University College London, London, UK
Introduction Social cognition and communication processes refer to the mental processes underlying human social behavior and interaction, including the ability to create mental representations of others’ socia
Data Loading...
