Body image disturbance, interoceptive sensibility and the body schema across female adulthood: A pre-registered study

Abstract

Body image disturbance (BID) includes distortions associated with weight or shape and is typically exemplified by explicit negative attitudes and evaluations of one's body. Women with high levels of BIDs show disturbances in the body schema: an implicit sensorimotor representation of the body in space which includes mental simulation of a movement such as motor imagery. Interoception, the processing of internal bodily signals, influences both the body image and body schema. Here, we examined the relationship between BID, interoceptive sensibility and the body schema across different age cohorts of adult women. Online cross-sectional data were collected from 1214 female participants from four age groups: Young adults (18-24), Adults (25-39), Middle-aged adults (40-59), and Older aged adults (60-75). BID was indexed by questionnaires measuring body objectification (body surveillance and body shame) and state and trait body dissatisfaction. Interoceptive sensibility was measured using the MAIA-2. The body schema was evaluated through the Own Body Transformation (OBT) task: a mental rotation task which assessed the capacity to make an embodied mental transformation. Results show that while body objectification and state body dissatisfaction decreased from young to older adulthood, trait dissatisfaction showed a marked increase. Additionally, a negative relationship between interoceptive sensibility and BID across all age groups was evidenced. Finally, age, BID and orientation of the presented body were significant predictors of the time taken to make an embodied transformation. Overall, this study shows that components of BID take on different trajectories across female adulthood and are associated with how the body schema is represented in non-clinical populations.