Measuring implicit associations between food and body stimuli in anorexia nervosa: a Go/No-Go Association Task

PURPOSE: The present study aimed to explore the implicit associations between food and bodily stimuli in patients with anorexia nervosa (AN) and control subjects (HC). METHODS: A Go/No-Go Association Task was administrated to 55 participants (28 AN and 27 HC), using food stimuli (low-calorie food vs. high-calorie food) and body stimuli (underweight vs. overweight bodies). RESULTS: We evidenced an implicit association between food and body stimuli in the AN group, whereas the HC group only showed a tendency. AN and HC groups also exhibited different categorization strategies: the AN group tended to categorize stimuli as low-calorie foods and underweight bodies less than the HC group, and they tended to categorize stimuli as high-calorie foods and overweight bodies more than the HC group. CONCLUSION: The present study revealed for the first time specificities of the AN population’s implicit association between food and body stimuli in terms of association strength and categorization strategy. Furthermore, the results suggest that combining implicit methodologies with other methods could contribute to a better characterization of the physiopathology of AN. LEVEL OF EVIDENCE: Level I, experimental study. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s40519-023-01621-9.