Social cognition and emotion regulation may be impaired in adolescents with obesity independent of the presence of binge eating disorder: a two-center study

Abstract

Background: Binge eating disorder (BED) and obesity in adolescents is associated with variations in social cognition and emotion regulation. The current study aimed to evaluate the Theory of Mind (ToM) abilities in adolescents with obesity with and without BED and to examine how they related to emotional and psychopathologic evaluations. Methods: One hundred twenty-eight adolescents comprising 32 non-BED adolescents with obesity, 32 adolescents with BED and obesity, and 64 healthy controls (HC) completed a battery of tests to analyze their social cognition and clinical psychopathologic profile. Results: Patients with BED and non-BED patients with obesity showed poorer performance in emotional regulation and social cognition tasks compared with normal-weight adolescents without BED. Various correlations were evident between depression, emotional regulation problems, and eating attitudes and patterns. Conclusions: Patients with BED and non-BED adolescents with obesity showed a decline in ToM tasks, independent of their clinical psychopathological profile. Consistent with other studies, this is the first study to assess both social cognition and emotion regulation skills in adolescents with BED and obesity.

Adiposity affects emotional information processing

“…We identified six studies with similar task structures to explore emotion recognition. Four studies reported that obese subjects present difficulties in recognizing emotions based on general recognition accuracy, global errors, and rate of correct responses ( Baldaro et al, 1996 ; Koch and Pollatos, 2015 ; Percinel et al, 2018 ; Turan et al, 2019 ). Of these studies, one reported more errors in the recognition of specific emotions such as happiness and neutral expressions ( Baldaro et al, 1996 ).…”

“…Similar difficulties in recognizing emotions in obesity were reported by Percinel et al (2018) in another study carried out in male and female obese adolescents compared to a normal weight group (refer to Table 1 ). Turan et al (2019) compared the global accuracy in an emotion recognition task between three groups of adolescents: (1) obesity plus binge eating disorder (BED) group; (2) obesity without BED group; and (3) normal weight group. The authors reported lower global emotion recognition accuracy in both obesity groups compared to the normal weight group (refer to Table 1 ).…”