Abstract
The excessive concern for body shape is considered as one of the most powerful risk factor for eating disorders (EDs). Previous studies reported that patients with EDs showed body image disturbance and speculated that the disturbance might be derived from distorted visual perception or visual memory of body images. It has been suggested that patients with EDs overestimated their own body in visual memory. However, it is not clear whether the tendency of EDs affects the perception of human body. We investigated the relationships between ED tendency and characteristics of body image-related size perception. Undergraduate female students participated in the experiment. The participants were divided into two groups by their ED tendency using the subscale of Eating Disorder Inventory-91 (EDI-91). They were asked to adjust the length of the horizontal line segments of the standard stimulus to fit to the length of comparison stimuli, the horizontal line segments which were superimposed on a human body pictures or a rectangular. The comparison stimulus and the standard stimulus were simultaneously presented on a LCD side by side. The comparison line segments were positioned over the waist of body picture or the center of the rectangle. Three types of body pictures were used; underweight, normal weight and class-2 obesity. The ratio of the reported length of the comparison stimulus to the standard stimulus was analyzed using mixed repeated measures ANOVA. The results showed that 1) all participants overestimated the length of the line segment superimposed on the human body pictures against to the line segments over the rectangles, 2) participants with higher EDI-91 score perceived the line segments over the obese body picture longer than participants with lower EDI-91 scores did. These results suggest that ED tendency should affect body picture perception.
Meeting abstract presented at VSS 2015