Selective visual attention for ugly and beautiful body parts in eating disorders

Abstract

Body image disturbance is characteristic of eating disorders, and current treatments use body exposure to reduce bad body feelings. There is however little known about the cognitive effects of body exposure. In the present study, eye movement registration (electroculography) as a direct index of selective visual attention was used while eating symptomatic and normal control participants were exposed to digitalized pictures of their own body and control bodies. The data showed a decreased focus on their own 'beautiful' body parts in the high symptomatic participants, whereas inspection of their own 'ugly' body parts was given priority. In the normal control group a self-serving cognitive bias was found: they focused more on their own 'beautiful' body parts and less on their own 'ugly' body parts. When viewing other bodies the pattern was reversed: high symptom participants allocated their attention to the beautiful parts of other bodies, whereas normal controls concentrated on the ugly parts of the other bodies. From the present findings the hypothesis follows that a change in the processing of information might be needed for body exposure to be successful.

Static and dynamic body image in bulimia nervosa: Mental representation of body dimensions and biological motion patterns

“…slimmer) body parts. 48 Further studies should confirm this hypothesis by combining the photo distortion technique and the eye tracking method. In spite of this self-serving attentional bias among healthy controls, these participants still wanted to be thinner than they actually were.…”

Women gaze behaviour in assessing female bodies: the effects of clothing, body size, own body composition and body satisfaction

“…Patients with Bulimia Nervosa preferred to view slimmer bodies, whereas healthy controls showed similar viewing preference for bodies with high and low BMIs (Blechert et al, 2009). Furthermore, women scoring high on eating disorder symptomology tended to focus on the self-identified "beautiful" body parts on other women, whereas healthy controls focused on the "ugly" body parts (Jansen, Nederkoorn, & Mulkens, 2005).…”

“…The first one is the clothing effect. The typical stimuli used in previous research included photographic or computerised images of females in swimwear (Roefs et al, 2008;Lykins et al, 2014), underwear (Jansen et al, 2005), Lycra (Blechert et al, 2009;Jannelle et al, 2009) or nude (Glauert et al, 2010;Horndasch et al, 2012), thus revealing the shape of the figure in great detail. What is yet to be considered is the viewing behaviour for images where the body regions are somewhat ambiguous, such as in everyday clothing.…”

Evidence for attentional bias in women exhibiting bulimotypic symptoms

“…Jansen et al 6 used an eye tracking method to investigate selective attention to beautiful and ugly body parts in women with eating-disordered symptoms. When they were attending to their own body parts, eating-disordered participants spent significantly more time looking at their self-identified ugly body parts than at their self-identified beautiful body parts (no such bias was observed in control participants).…”

“…8,9 We, therefore, wondered if bulimic symptomatology also might be linked to selective attention to others' attractive faces. In addition, Jansen et al 6 only investigated attention to images of women, leaving unanswered the question of whether images of attractive men might capture attention to the same extent. Finally, if there is an association between bulimotypic symptoms and attention to other attractive women, is it explained by bulimotypic variables such as perfectionism (i.e., attention to perfectionistic ideals) or body dissatisfaction (i.e., attention driven by social comparison)?…”