Michelle Spix

Maastricht University | UM · Faculty of Psychology and Neuroscience

When evaluating ambiguous situations, humans sometimes use their behavior as a source of information (behavior-as-information effect) and interpret safety behaviors as evidence for danger. Accordingly, we hypothesized that eating disorder safety behaviors (restrictive eating, body checking, etc.) might aggravate fear and anxiety in individuals with...

The restriction of energy intake is a central and persistent symptom of anorexia nervosa. Recent models of the disorder suggest that food restrictions are learned avoidance behaviours, which are acquired and maintained by classical and operant conditioning. The present study aims to test this learning model of food restriction. It investigates whet...

Individual differences in extinction learning have attracted ample attention of researchers and are under investigation as a marker for the onset of anxiety disorders and treatment response. Unfortunately, the common paradigm for obtaining the extinction rate, which entails aversive stimulus pairings, is subject to practical limitations. Therefore,...

Anorexia Nervosa is a severe and disabling mental disorder and a huge challenge to treat. Intense fears of e.g., food, eating, weight gain and social evaluation are core features of anorexia nervosa and obstacles during treatment. The perceived threats trigger avoidance and safety behaviors like highly restrictive eating, strict eating rules, vomit...

The ratio between the second and fourth digit of the hand (2D:4D ratio) has been used as a marker of prenatal exposure to sex hormones. A previous study found that men with smaller 2D:4D ratios, relative to men with larger ratios, were more agreeable and less quarrelsome with women than with men. We aimed to replicate this study, using a similar pr...