A machine learning investigation into the temporal dynamics of physical activity‐mediated emotional regulation in adolescents with anorexia nervosa and healthy controls

Abstract

Objective Anorexia nervosa (AN) is commonly experienced alongside difficulties of emotion regulation (ER). Previous works identified physical activity (PA) as a mechanism for AN sufferers to achieve desired affective states, with evidence towards mitigation of negative affect. However, temporal associations of PA with specific emotional state outcomes are unknown. Method Using lag‐ensemble machine learning and feature importance analyses, 888 affect‐based ecological momentary assessments across N = 75 adolescents with AN (N = 44) and healthy controls (N = 31) were analysed to explore significance of past PA, measured through passively collected wrist‐worn actigraphy, with subsequent self‐report momentary affect change across 9 affect constructs. Results Among AN adolescents, later lags (≥2.5 h) were important in predicting change across negative emotions (hostility, sadness, fear, guilt). AN‐specific model performance on held‐out test data revealed the holistic “negative affect” construct as significantly predictable. Only joviality and self‐assurance, both positively‐valenced constructs, were significantly predictable among healthy‐control‐specific models. Discussion Results recapitulated previous findings regarding the importance of PA in negative ER for AN individuals. Moreover, PA was found to play a uniquely prominent role in predicting negative affect 4.5–6 h later among AN adolescents. Future research into the PA‐ER dynamic will benefit from targeting specific negative emotions across greater temporal scales.

Identification of affective and social reinforcement functions of driven exercise: Evidence from three samples

“…Although these models are derived from distinct lines of research, both emphasize short-term affective consequences of driven exercise as key components in the maintenance of the behavior (for a comparison, see Kolar & Gorrell, 2020a, p. 2). There is empirical support for affective change after physical activity and driven exercise in individuals with EDs from ecological momentary assessment (EMA) studies, showing short-term increases in positive affect and decreases in negative affect following driven exercise (Engel et al, 2013;Kolar et al, 2020;Lekkas et al, 2022;Reichert et al, 2020). Other maintaining factors of driven exercise have been proposed beyond affective reinforcement.…”