Increasing Response Vigour Under Time Pressure as a Transdiagnostic Marker of Eating Disorders

Eating disorders (EDs) are characterised by intense concerns about food and weight. These concerns are linked to changes in decision-making, such as persisting with actions that are no longer rewarding. For example, individuals might engage in long exercise sessions or time-consuming body checking practices, despite limited benefits. This study tested whether people with subclinical ED symptoms show increased persistence due to altered decision-making processes. Specifically, we postulated a shift in internal thresholds for making different decisions in EDs, which change the balance between exploitation and exploration. A subclinical group with heightened concerns about eating (sED; N = 44) and a healthy control group (HC; N = 56) completed a foraging task, in which an option on screen was exploited for reward. With each decision to exploit, reward feedback decreased and participants had to decide when to move on to a new option. Each block was time limited to 7.5 minutes. Behavioural persistence was measured as the number of seconds spent exploiting each option. Decision thresholds were measured when deciding to move on, as the counterfactual reward that would have been received for an exploit action. We predicted that the sED group would show increased persistence and decreased decision thresholds (i.e. lower counterfactual reward when deciding to move on) in comparison to the HC group. We found no evidence for these predictions. Instead, exploratory analyses showed that the sED group exhibited progressively faster response times (RTs) when approaching the time limit for each block. This increase in motor vigour was correlated with the severity of eating disorder symptoms from a range of traditional diagnostic categories. Our results point to changing motor vigour as a potential transdiagnostic marker of ED tendencies.