Abstract:
Body image disturbance is a both a risk factor for, and a symptom of, many eating disorders and refers to the misperception of and dissatisfaction with one\'s own body. Women with high body dissatisfaction have been shown to direct more attention to low body mass index (BMI) bodies, which results in the overestimation of body size via body size adaptation. Therefore, attention may have a causal role in body image disturbance. We conducted a novel training visual search task with 142 young adult women who we trained to attend to either high or low BMI bodies. We assessed the effects of this training on attention to bodies of different sizes, body size adaptation, and body dissatisfaction. Women trained to attend to low BMI bodies decreased their perceptions of a \'normal\' body size via adaptation from pre- to post-training (p < 0.001); however, women trained to attend to high BMI bodies showed no change in their perception of a \'normal\' body size. We found no lasting effects of the training on attention to body size or body dissatisfaction; however, our visual search task showed poor internal consistency as a measure of attention. These findings indicate that attention to low BMI bodies may exacerbate body image disturbance in women. However, more reliable measures of attentional are required to confirm this finding.
摘要:
身体图像干扰是一个危险因素,和一个症状,许多饮食失调是指对自己身体的误解和不满。身体不满意程度高的女性被证明会更多地关注低体重指数(BMI)的身体,这导致通过身体尺寸适应高估身体尺寸。因此,注意力可能在身体形象紊乱中起因果作用。我们对142名年轻成年女性进行了一项新颖的训练视觉搜索任务,这些女性接受了高或低BMI的训练。我们评估了这种训练对不同大小身体注意力的影响,身体尺寸适应,身体不满。接受低BMI身体训练的妇女通过从训练前到训练后的适应来降低她们对“正常”体型的看法(p<0.001);然而,接受过高BMI身体训练的女性对“正常”体型的看法没有变化。我们没有发现训练对注意身体大小或身体不满的持久影响;然而,我们的视觉搜索任务显示出较差的内部一致性来衡量注意力.这些发现表明,对低BMI身体的关注可能会加剧女性的身体形象障碍。然而,需要更可靠的注意措施来证实这一发现。