Disordered eating in female Indian students during the Covid-19 pandemic: The potential role of family.

BACKGROUND: Within a paternalistic culture where weight is socially important and parental pressures are strong, 10 female Indian university students across various countries faced particular problems when living with their parents during the Covid-19 lockdowns. OBJECTIVE: The current interview study examines why cultural and familial factors during the Covid-19 lockdown had such an impact on female Indian university students' food and exercise behaviors and self-view. METHOD: Semi-structured, online (Microsoft Teams) interviews were conducted with 10 female Indian university students aged 20-23, who had moved back in with their parents during lockdown. The recorded and transcribed interviews were analyzed using reflexive thematic analysis with a contextualist orientation. RESULTS: Five themes were generated. Set within a context where eating and exercise habits are regulated by cultural and familial factors (Theme 1), lockdown living situations amplified these factors (Theme 2), severely impacting students' cognitions and affect (Theme 3), and relationships with their parents (Theme 4) even after lockdown was over. Participants' experiences led to greater awareness and motivation to confront their issues regarding body image and mental health (Theme 5). CONCLUSIONS: These findings have practical implications for counseling and eating disorder (ED) therapy in universities: Improved understanding of cultural and familial factors that affect female Indian students likely leads to better support. Our findings also emphasizes the need for research into the role of family and the impacts of family dynamics in the development of disordered eating habits. PUBLIC SIGNIFICANCE: In Indian culture, eating and exercise habits tend to be regulated by cultural and familial factors. When female university students moved back in with their parents during the Covid-19 lockdowns, their living situation amplified these factors, severely impacting students' thoughts and feelings about their body, and relationships with their parents even after lockdown was over. The study has strong practical implications for university counseling settings and adds to research on the role of culture in how ED develops.

Survival of the selfish: contrasting self-referential and survival-based encoding.

Processing information in the context of personal survival scenarios elicits a memory advantage, relative to other rich encoding conditions such as self-referencing. However, previous research is unable to distinguish between the influence of survival and self-reference because personal survival is a self-referent encoding context. To resolve this issue, participants in the current study processed items in the context of their own survival and a familiar other person's survival, as well as in a semantic context. Recognition memory for the items revealed that personal survival elicited a memory advantage relative to semantic encoding, whereas other-survival did not. These findings reinforce suggestions that the survival effect is closely tied with self-referential encoding, ensuring that fitness information of potential importance to self is successfully retained in memory.

Divided attention selectively impairs memory for self-relevant information.

Information that is relevant to oneself tends to be remembered more than information that relates to other people, but the role of attention in eliciting this "self-reference effect" is unclear. In the present study, we assessed the importance of attention in self-referential encoding using an ownership paradigm, which required participants to encode items under conditions of imagined ownership by themselves or by another person. Previous work has established that this paradigm elicits a robust self-reference effect, with more "self-owned" items being remembered than "other-owned" items. Access to attentional resources was manipulated using divided-attention tasks at encoding. A significant self-reference effect emerged under full-attention conditions and was related to an increase in episodic recollection for self-owned items, but dividing attention eliminated this memory advantage. These findings are discussed in relation to the nature of self-referential cognition and the importance of attentional resources at encoding in the manifestation of the self-reference effect in memory.

Exploring the effects of ownership and choice on self-memory biases.

Objects encoded in the context of temporary ownership by self enjoy a memorial advantage over objects owned by other people. This memory effect has been linked to self-referential encoding processes. The current inquiry explored the extent to which the effects of ownership are influenced by the degree of personal choice involved in assigning ownership. In three experiments pairs of participants chose objects to keep for ownership by self, and rejected objects that were given to the other participant to own. Recognition memory for the objects was then assessed. Experiment 1 showed that participants recognised more items encoded as "self-owned" than "other-owned", but only when they had been chosen by self. Experiment 2 replicated this pattern when participants' sense of choice was illusory. A source memory test in Experiment 3 showed that self-chosen items were most likely to be correctly attributed to ownership by self. These findings are discussed with reference to the link between owned objects and the self, and the routes through which self-referential operations can impact on cognition.