Objective: In the present study, it was hypothesized that restrained eating subjects will show an attentional bias for body shape and weight words during the automatic stage of information processing and not during the strategic or controlled stage.
Method: Thirteen high restrained and fifteen low restrained eaters participated in the experiment. Body shape and weight words as well as neutral words were presented both supraliminally and subliminally during a computerized Stroop task.
Results: The high restrained eaters did not show distortions in the processing of body shape and weight stimuli; neither an early automatic processing priority nor a pattern of strategic processing selectivity characterizes restrained eaters.
Discussion: The absence of cognitive distortions in the processing of body shape and weight information might point to a qualitative difference between normal restrained eaters and subjects with eating disorders of clinical severity.