Perception and Computation of Social Controllability in Bulimia Nervosa

Individuals with bulimia nervosa binge-eat and purge (e.g., self-induced vomiting, laxatives and/or diuretic misuse, and compulsive exercise) to control their shape or weight or to compensate for an episode of loss-of-control eating. One of the most efficacious treatment for bulimia nervosa is Interpersonal Psychotherapy (IPT). The IPT model for bulimia nervosa assumes the binge-purge cycle in bulimia nervosa is precipitated by interpersonal deficits that lead to negative emotions and self-evaluation. One of these interpersonal deficits is the inability to accurately perceive one's influence over others in a social environment.

We used an online version of an economic exchange task (Na et al., 2021) to examine this interpersonal deficit in individuals with bulimic symptoms.

My contributions to the project includes:

• programming self-reported questionnaires in REDCap
• managing study recruitment, screening, and data collection on Prolific
• performing data cleaning, visualization, and analysis in R (e.g., 1-to-1 nearest neighbor propensity score matching, linear mixed-effects models)
• drafting manuscript for publication

‍

• Viranda, T., Na, S., Heflin, M., Gu, X., Berner, L. A. Altered perception and computation of social influence among individuals who binge eat. Manuscript in preparation.
• Viranda, T., Na, S., Gu, X., & Berner, L. A.(2021, November). Inaccurate perception of social control in bulimia nervosa. Poster presented at the 55th annual convention ofthe Association for Behavioral and Cognitive Therapies (ABCT) Neurocognitive Therapies and Translational Research Special Interest Group Student Poster Exposition.