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Disordered eating and eating disorders have huge impact on athletic health and performance. Understanding risk factors for disordered eating development is paramount to protecting the health and performance of these athletes. This project tested a model longitudinally to test whether body dissatisfaction (mediated by negative affect) and societal pressures (mediated by internalisation) predicted bulimic symptomatology at 1 year. The study recruited 1017 male and female athletes in a range of sports at three time points over a year. Cross-lag meditation modelling in MPLUS was utilised to test the hypothesised model. Results indicated that societal pressures mediated by general internalisation led to bulimic symptomatology and that gender and sport type do moderate the relationships. However, measurement issues indicate that scales not originally created for athletes may not reliably measure athletes' experience. This research highlights how understanding how to better assess risk factors and disordered eating related concepts in athletes is a key next step. The study is unique in its longitudinal design and in its sampling of a wide range of sports in both male and female athletes., Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

Objectives: This project examined risk factors of disordered eating in athletes by adapting and applying a theoretical model. It tested a previously proposed theoretical model and explored the utility of a newly formed model within an athletic population across gender, age, and sport type to explain disordered eating., Design: The design was cross-sectional and the first phase in a series of longitudinal studies., Methods: 1,017 athletes completed online questionnaires related to social pressures, internalisation, body dissatisfaction, negative affect, restriction, and bulimia. Structural equation modelling was employed to analyse the fit of the measurement and structural models and to do invariance testing., Results: The original theoretical model failed to achieve acceptable goodness of fit (χ2 [70, 1017] = 1043.07; p < .0001. CFI = .55; GFI = .88; NFI = .53; RMSEA = .12 [90% CI = .111-.123]). Removal of non-significant pathways and addition of social media resulted in the model achieving a parsimonious goodness of fit (χ2 [19, 1017] = 77.58; p < .0001. CFI = .96; GFI = .98; NFI = .95; RMSEA = .055 [90% CI = .043-.068]). Invariance tests revealed that the newly revised model differed across gender, age, level, competition status, and length of sport participation., Conclusion: This study showed that the formation of disordered eating symptomology might not be associated with sport pressures experienced by athletes. It revealed that disordered eating development varies across gender, competition level, sport type, and age, which must be considered to prevent and treat disordered eating in athletes., Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

[This corrects the article DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0152744.].

Objective: The aim of this study was to develop and validate a short form of the Eating Disorder Examination Questionnaire (EDE-Q) for routine, including session by session, outcome assessment., Method: The current, 28-item version (6.0) of the EDE-Q was completed by 489 individuals aged 18-72 with various eating disorders recruited from three UK specialist eating disorder services. Rasch analysis was carried out on factors identified by means of principal component analysis, which in combination with expert ratings informed the development of an EDE-Q short form. The shortened questionnaire's reliability, validity and sensitivity was assessed based on online data collected from students of a UK university and volunteers with a history of eating disorders recruited from a national eating disorders charity aged 18-74 (N = 559)., Results: A 12-item short form, the Eating Disorder Examination Questionnaire Short (EDE-QS) was derived. The new measure showed high internal consistency (Cronbach's α = .913) and temporal stability (ICC = .93; p < .001). It was highly correlated with the original EDE-Q (r = .91 for people without ED; r = .82 for people with ED) and other measures of eating disorder and comorbid psychopathology. It was sufficiently sensitive to distinguish between people with and without eating disorders., Discussion: The EDE-QS is a brief, reliable and valid measure of eating disorder symptom severity that performs similarly to the EDE-Q and that lends itself for the use of sessional outcome monitoring in treatment and research.

Objectives: Recent research suggests certain neuropsychological deficits occur in anorexia nervosa (AN). The role of starvation in these deficits remains unclear. Studies of individuals without AN can elucidate our understanding of the effect of short-term starvation on neuropsychological performance., Methods: Using a within-subjects repeated measures design, 60 healthy female participants were tested once after fasting for 18 hours, and once when satiated. Measures included two tasks to measure central coherence and a set-shifting task., Results: Fasting exacerbated set-shifting difficulties on a rule-change task. Fasting was associated with stronger local and impaired global processing, indicating weaker central coherence., Conclusions: Models of AN that propose a central role for set-shifting difficulties or weak central coherence should also consider the impact of short-term fasting on these processes.

We investigated the impact of temporary food restriction on a set shifting task requiring participants to judge clusters of pictures against a frequently changing rule. 60 healthy female participants underwent two testing sessions: once after fasting for 16 hours and once in a satiated state. Participants also completed a battery of questionnaires (Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale [HADS]; Persistence, Perseveration and Perfectionism Questionnaire [PPPQ-22]; and Eating Disorders Examination Questionnaire [EDE-Q6]). Set shifting costs were significantly increased after fasting; this effect was independent of self-reported mood and perseveration. Furthermore, higher levels of weight concern predicted a general performance decrement under conditions of fasting. We conclude that relatively short periods of fasting can lead to set shifting impairments. This finding may have relevance to studies of development, individual differences, and the interpretation of psychometric tests. It also could have implications for understanding the etiology and maintenance of eating disorders, in which impaired set shifting has been implicated.