Emotional selective attention in obese and normal weight females

The aim of the current study was to investigate the emotional processing style in women of obese and normal weight. In an implicit memory task, 16 obese and 16 normal weight females were assessed using a word completion task. The task involved negative emotional, neutral and neutral with sound (750 Hz) words in order to have an additional distracting signal. In the study phase, participants had to rate how agreeable or disagreeable they regarded each word. In the test phase, obese patients completed emotional words faster. On the contrary, they were slower than controls in completing the neutral words with sound. Results show a tendency in obese women towards automatic and involuntary processing of emotional information with negative valence as well as an attentional bias for threat-related information. This work reveals the differential influence of attention and implicit memory in the processing of emotional information in obese patients.