The colour-naming performance of a group of hospitalized anorexic women (N=12) was tested on initial admission, after 1 week of treatment and again after 12 weeks of treatment. Compared to a control population of non-clinical females (N=18), the anorexics colour-named both food and body shape words more slowly than their neutral matched words; although colour-naming times, in general, were slower for anorexics. The size of this colour-naming impairment decreased as a function of weight gain and improvement in psychopathology, although colour-naming times for food words improved more quickly than for body shape words for both clinical and non-clinical subjects. The results of correlational analysis between colour-naming times and Eating Disorder Inventory (EDI-2) responses lead to the conclusion that colour-naming performance for body shape, rather than food words, provides a clearer index of improvement in psychopathological status in anorexia nervosa.