The role of family of origin food‐related experiences in bulimic symptomatology

Abstract

There was good evidence for the validity of the Family History Inventory. The theoretical implications of the mediation tests are discussed.

Associations among family‐of‐origin food‐related experiences, expectancies, and disordered eating

“…Although adult reports of family-of-origin learning experiences are, of course, subject to retrospective bias, there is considerable evidence for their validity. 6,7,14 The demonstration that they relate, as expected, to independently validated measures of overall learning provides further support for their validity. Similarly, if expectancy measures really do summarize prior learning, they should relate to reports of important prior learning events.…”

“…Previously, similar findings were obtained in a general population sample of middle school girls. 7 It is noteworthy that the magnitude of the associations among learning events, expectancies, and disordered behavior were comparable across those two populations. It thus seems possible that the overall expectancies of adolescent girls appear to operate similarly to those of adult women.…”

“…It now seems possible to measure overall risk-related learning in the form of expectancy endorsement, and to study the influence of specific learning experiences on expectancy formation. Presumably, risk for eating disorders is ultimately a product of genetic, 35 personality, 5,22 learning, 7,9 and other factors. Use of the expectancy concept to reflect important aspects of learning risk can clarify risk models.…”

“…We used MacBrayer et al's 7 family history inventory (FHI), which provides retrospective reports on two broad domains, labeled ''family teasing'' and ''negative maternal modeling,'' as well as scores on subscales within those domains and a scale measuring the experience of being criticized by friends for one's weight. Our goals were to confirm previous findings on the relation of specific learning experiences to eating disordered behavior, and then to test a set of hypotheses derived from MacBrayer et al, 7 relating family-of-origin learning experiences, adult expectancy endorsement, and adult levels of disordered eating behaviors.…”

Learning experiences in dance class predict adult eating disturbance

“…Individual differences in thinness/restricting and eating expectancies appear to stem from family learning experiences (Annus, Smith, Fischer, Hendricks, & Fister, 2007;MacBrayer, Smith, McCarthy, Demos, & Simmons, 2001) and they enable one to classify anorexia nervosa, bulimia nervosa and control patients with 94% accuracy (Hohlstein et al, 1998). They correlate highly with adolescent and adult symptom reports Simmons, Smith, & Hill, 2002) and appear to mediate the influence of sociocultural pressure to be thin on bulimic symptoms (Stice, Nemeroff, & Shaw, 1996).…”