Eating disorder psychopathology predicts heart-rate variability under social evaluative stress in female adolescents

Abstract

This study investigated whether eating disorder psychopathology predicts increased vulnerability to social evaluative stress in female adolescents (mean age = 14.64 years) and whether social anxiety disorder symptoms amplified this relationship. Twenty-two females answered eating disorder and social anxiety psychopathology questionnaires and underwent a modified sing-a-song test to provoke social evaluative stress, while their heart-rate variability was recorded. We extracted mean heart-rate variability intervals for the sing-a-song stress test, and evaluated whether eating disorder psychopathology predicts heart-rate variability using a linear regression model with moderation analysis. Results indicated that higher eating disorder psychopathology predicted lower heart-rate variability (β = -4.082; p =.003) and that only high symptoms of social anxiety intensified this relationship (β =.2973, p =.0001). We demonstrate that subthreshold eating disorder psychopathology may explain increased reactivity to social evaluation in female adolescents, and that social anxiety symptoms may facilitate this relationship. Future work should account for subthreshold eating disorder symptoms when investigating the stress response in female adolescents. As well, possible mechanisms underlying the associations between subthreshold eating disorder symptoms and social stress need to be investigated, such as body image anxiety and fear of weight gain.