Using theories of delusion formation to explain abnormal beliefs in Body Dysmorphic Disorder (BDD)

Abstract Body Dysmorphic Disorder (BDD) is characterised by overvalued or delusional beliefs of ‘imagined ugliness’. Delusional beliefs have been explained by a number of cognitive theories, including faulty perceptions, biases in attention, and corruption of semantic memory. Atypical aesthetics may...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Psychiatry research 2014-03, Vol.215 (3), p.599-605
Main Authors: Rossell, Susan L, Labuschagne, Izelle, Dunai, Judy, Kyrios, Michael, Castle, David J
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Adult
Adult and adolescent clinical studies
Attention
Biological and medical sciences
Body Dysmorphic Disorder
Body Dysmorphic Disorders - psychology
Body Image - psychology
Case-Control Studies
Cognition
Delusions
Delusions - psychology
Female
Humans
Imagination
Male
Medical sciences
Middle Aged
Perception
Psychiatric Status Rating Scales
Psychiatry
Psychology. Psychoanalysis. Psychiatry
Psychopathology. Psychiatry
Regression Analysis
Self Concept
Semantics
Somatoform disorders. Psychosomatics
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:Abstract Body Dysmorphic Disorder (BDD) is characterised by overvalued or delusional beliefs of ‘imagined ugliness’. Delusional beliefs have been explained by a number of cognitive theories, including faulty perceptions, biases in attention, and corruption of semantic memory. Atypical aesthetics may also influence beliefs in BDD. In fourteen BDD patients, compared to controls ( n =14), we examined these theories of beliefs in a cognitive test battery consisting of perceptual organisation and visual affect perception tasks, a Stroop task using body words, a sentence verification task, a fluency task, and an attractiveness task. BDD patients performed similar to controls on tasks measuring information (bias) processing and aesthetics. However, BDD showed abnormal abilities on semantic processing involving sentence verification and category fluency. There was only a trend finding of impaired performance on perceptual processing tasks in BDD. The findings suggest that the delusional beliefs in BDD may be explained by impaired semantic processing.
ISSN:0165-1781
1872-7123
DOI:10.1016/j.psychres.2013.12.030