Michelle Spix, PhD candidate
Michelle is currently completing her PhD under the supervision of Anita Jansen. Her project focuses on the development and maintenance of fear and avoidance in eating disorders. Specifically, she tests whether classical and operant conditioning could underlie the rigid food avoidance, reduced eating desires and fear of food often present in individuals with anorexia nervosa. She researches this in the laboratory using conditioning paradigms in which both self-reports, as well as psychophysiological indices of learning are assessed. Eventually, she hopes that her PhD project helps to better understand the mechanisms underlying anorexia nervosa and to inspire new treatment approaches.
Publications that I’m most proud of
Avoidance in Anorexia Nervosa: Towards a research agenda. Physiology & Behavior, 2021.
In this article, we discuss a new transdiagnostic research agenda featuring both basic and clinical experimental research into avoidance as an important mechanism maintaining anorexia nervosa.
Can you learn to starve yourself? Inducing food avoidance in the laboratory. Behaviour Research and Therapy, 2023.
Recent models of anorexia nervosa suggest that food restriction is a learned avoidance behaviour, which is acquired and maintained by classical and operant conditioning. In this study we tested this learning model of food restriction.
From bad to worse: Safety behaviors exacerbate eating disorder fears. Behavioral Sciences, 2023.
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. In this study we tested to what extent eating disorder safety behaviors increase threat perception in individuals with and without an eating disorder.
