As with anxiety disorders, familial interactions are thought to be a factor in the development of eating disorders. Minuchin posits that the families of anorexics are characterized by overinvolvement with one another, overprotectiveness, rigidity, conflict avoidance, and poor conflict resolution (Wilson, Heffernan, & Black, 1996). We found no long-term longitudinal studies of the role of family dynamics in the development of eating disorders, but several studies do target the issue. For example, in a study of 77 young adolescent girls, Byely et al. (2000) found that girls' perceptions of negative family relations predicted problematic dieting behavior then and one year later. In a Belgian study, Kog and Vandereycken (1989) compared 30 families of an eating-disorder patient to 30 normal comparison families. The patients were between the ages of 15 and 24. Each family member completed questionnaires, and families were observed while engaged in a "decision-making task" and a "conflict-resolution task." The authors found that eating-disorder families avoid conflict and have interpersonal boundary problems.