Better decision-making skills may help young people resist problematic eating behaviours

What decision-making traits are associated with early signs of disordered eating?

Previous cross-sectional studies, which observe the variables of interest at a single point in time, have indicated that decision-making might be important for understanding eating disorders.

However in order to draw stronger conclusions about how decision-making might affect the development of eating disorders, UCL researchers have been able to draw on data from the national longitudinal Millennium Cohort Study.

Using this data, researchers at IOE conducted an analysis to gain greater insights into how decision-making, measured in childhood and adolescence at ages 11 and 14, might be related to the presence of early symptoms (or prodromes) in adolescence at ages 14 and 17, before any eating disorder fully develops.

The data allowed researchers to investigate whether participants had reported symptoms typical of prodromal eating disorder pathology. They compared these variables against the quality of the young people's decision-making.

Early indicators of eating disorder behaviours

• Body dissatisfaction (perceiving their own body as being too overweight),
• intention to lose weight or a strong desire to lose weight,
• dietary restriction (actively eating less to influence their weight or body shape),
• excessive exercise (exercising in a driven way in order to influence weight or body shape).

Decision-making characteristics*

• Risk-taking,
• quality of decision-making,
• deliberation time,
• delay aversion,
• risk adjustment.

*From a subscale of the Cambridge Gambling Task.

Findings

Lower-quality decision-making, coupled with shorter deliberation times, was significantly associated with early indicators of eating disorder symptoms by ages 14 and 17. This indicates that participants who took less time before making inaccurate decisions were likely to also show persistent eating disorder prodromes throughout adolescence.

In contrast, a more moderate decision-making approach was significantly associated with an absence of prodromal eating pathology at ages 14 and 17. This moderate approach was characterised by being more tolerant of delayed rewards, and shorter deliberation times to make decisions that were less risky.

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By Sarah-Jane Gregori.

Image

Laura / Adobe Stock.

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