An investigation of the "jumping to conclusions" data-gathering bias and paranoid thoughts in Asperger syndrome.

The existence of a data-gathering bias, in the form of jumping to conclusions, and links to paranoid ideation was investigated in Asperger syndrome (AS). People with AS (N = 30) were compared to a neurotypical control group (N = 30) on the Reading the Mind in the Eyes and the Beads tasks, with self-report measures of depression, general anxiety, social anxiety, self-consciousness and paranoid ideation. The AS group performed less well than the control group on the Reading the Mind in the Eyes Task with regard to accuracy but responded more quickly and tended to make decisions on the basis of less evidence on the Beads Task with 50 % demonstrating a clear 'jumping to conclusions bias', whereas none of the control group showed such a bias. Depression and general anxiety were associated with paranoid ideation but not data-gathering style, which was contrary to expectation.

Emotional processing in women with anorexia nervosa and in healthy volunteers.

Emotional processing was investigated in patients with anorexia nervosa (AN) and in healthy volunteers (HVs) using self report questionnaires and information processing tasks. Compared to the HVs, patients with AN had lower levels of self reported emotional awareness and expression. They also responded more slowly to, correctly identified fewer emotions and misclassified more emotions in a facial recognition task, and responded more slowly to, and recalled fewer, self-referent emotion words. There were no key differences between the two groups on non-emotional control tasks, suggesting that their deficits are specific to emotional information and not a general feature of the illness. Analysis indicated that some, but not all, of the differences found remained when depressive symptoms were taken into account. Exploratory analysis of sub-groups (medicated vs. unmedicated patients) indicated that those who were on medication may perform very differently from those who were not on medication, including when level of depression is controlled, although it is important to emphasise that these findings are preliminary. The implications of a deficit in emotional processing in those with AN, including discussion of the specific differences found between medicated and unmedicated, are discussed in relation to previous findings in the area. A number of implications for future research, theory and therapy with those with AN are discussed.