Abstract
Background
The role of mentalizing and empathy in the socio-emotional processing deficits of Eating Disorder (ED) patients has been under investigated. We aimed to assess these psychological processes and their interplay with ED symptoms by means of the network analysis approach.
Methods
Seventy-seven women with EDs completed self-report questionnaires assessing ED, anxious and depressive symptoms, and underwent two computerized tasks; the Movie for the Assessment of Social Cognition (MASC), assessing emotional and non-emotional mental state inferences, and the Empathic Accuracy Task-Revised (EAT-R), measuring accuracy in identifying others’ emotions and the extent to which those emotions are shared. A partial correlation network and bridge function analyses were computed.
Results
In the partial correlation network inference of cognitive mental states and shape concern were the nodes with the highest strength centrality. Inference of emotional mental states was the node with the highest bridge strength in the cluster of social cognition functions. Empathic and mentalizing abilities were directly connected with each other and with ED symptoms.
Conclusions
This is the first network analysis study which integrates self-reported symptoms and objective socio-cognitive performance in people with EDs. Results highlight the importance of mentalizing abilities in that they contribute to maintenance of ED psychopathology and to empathic ability.
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Data Availability
The datasets generated during and/or analysed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.
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Acknowledgements
V. Cardi acknowledges funding from the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) Biomedical Research Centre at South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust and King’s College London. The views expressed are those of the author and not necessarily those of the NIHR or the Department of Health and Social Care. The authors acknowledge Isabel Dziobek for her kind provision of the Movie for the Assessment of Social Cognition (MASC) task.
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This research received no specific grant from any funding agency, commercial or not-for-profit sectors.
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All authors contributed to the study conception and design. Material preparation and data collection were performed by EC, RA and VC. Analyses were performed by GC and VR. The first draft of the manuscript was written by AMM. All authors commented on previous versions of the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.
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Alessio Maria Monteleone, Elisa Corsi, Giammarco Cascino, Valeria Ruzzi, Valdo Ricca, Rebecca Ashworth, Geoff Bird and Valentina Cardi declare that they have no conflict of interest.
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This study was performed in line with the principles of the Declaration of Helsinki. Approval was granted by the Research Ethics Committee of Fulham (REC Approval Number: 18/LO/0482).
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10608_2020_10126_MOESM1_ESM.tif
Supplementary file1 (TIF 7540 kb). Supplementary Figure 1—Average correlation between the strength centrality index of the partial correlation networks sampled with persons dropped and the original sample. Lines indicate the means and areas indicate the range from the 2.5th quantile to the 97.5th quantile
10608_2020_10126_MOESM2_ESM.tif
Supplementary file2 (TIF 7502 kb). Supplementary Figure 2—Bootstrapped confidence intervals of estimated edge-weights of the partial correlation network
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Monteleone, A.M., Corsi, E., Cascino, G. et al. The Interaction Between Mentalizing, Empathy and Symptoms in People with Eating Disorders: A Network Analysis Integrating Experimentally Induced and Self-report Measures. Cogn Ther Res 44, 1140–1149 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10608-020-10126-z
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10608-020-10126-z