Effect of social feedback on learning rate and cognitive distortions among women with bulimia

A group of college women diagnosed with bulimia nervosa and past depression ( n = 15) were compared to women with no bulimia and past depression ( n = 46) and women with no bulimia and no past depression ( n = 88) on their rate of learning and cognitive distortions on a computerized mental maze task. Half of the participants in each group were randomly assigned to receive positive social feedback for correct responses during the learning task and half to receive negative social feed-back for errors. Participants with bulimia (and past depression) receiving negative feedback learned the task at a significantly faster rate ( p < .03) than those receiving positive feedback, who learned at the same rate as all no-bulimia control groups. It was suggested that participants with bulimia nervosa learned the task unusually quickly in order to minimize the particularly salient negative social feedback they were receiving.