Selective attention to food and body shape words in dieters and restrained nondieters.

The current study investigated the presence of an attentional bias towards the processing of body shape and food-related material amongst noneating disordered women. Subjects carried out a computer-based Stroop color-naming task in which they had to name the colors of food-related words, body shape-related words, and two sets of matched neutral words. Significant color-naming disruptions of both food and body shape-related material were found for highly restrained eaters, irrespective of whether they were currently dieting. There were no reliable differences in color-naming times found for low to medium restrained eaters. Procedural differences probably account for the failure of previous studies to reveal such effects in nonclinical groups.