The mediating role of rumination in the relation between attentional bias towards thin female bodies and eating disorder symptomatology

Abstract

The present study sought to investigate the association between selective attentional processing of body images, rumination, and eating disorder symptoms in young women. Seventy-three undergraduate female students (ages 17–24) completed a modified dot-probe task to assess whether young women showed a differential attentional bias pattern towards thin and non-thin female bodies. Participants also completed self-report measures of eating disorder pathology. It was found that increased reports of dietary restraint and body dissatisfaction were associated with both greater attentional bias towards thin bodies and avoidance of non-thin bodies (as compared to neutral images), although the former relationship was stronger than the latter. The results suggest attentional vigilance to thin-ideal images plays a greater role in the potential development and/or maintenance of eating disorder symptoms, at least in a university sample of young women. Results also revealed that eating disorder-specific rumination mediated the relationship between attentional bias to thin ideal images and eating disorder symptoms. These findings build on existing research and theories, for example the impaired disengagement model of rumination, and have potential clinical applications such as specifically targeting ruminative and/or attentional processes in the prevention and/or treatment of eating disorder symptoms.

Approach and avoidance bias for thin‐ideal and normal‐weight body shapes in anorexia nervosa

“…Our findings also dovetail with earlier work by Jansen and colleagues who found that women with higher levels of eating disorder symptoms show an overestimation of the thinness of other women's bodies and lack a self-serving bias when rating the attractiveness of their own bodies (Alleva et al, 2013;Jansen, Smeets, Martijn, & Nederkoorn, 2006). Finally, our results are in line with previous research, suggesting that women with elevated eating disorder symptoms tend to selectively attend towards thin/attractive other women and towards non-thin/unattractive parts of their own body (Cho & Lee, 2013;Dondzilo, Rieger, Palermo, Byrne, & Bell, 2017;Jansen, Nederkoorn, & Mulkens, 2005;Roefs et al, 2008). Taken together, this underscores the notion that women feature differential patterns of implicit evaluation regarding one's own and other women's bodies.…”

Fear of self in eating disorders

“…These results complement the findings of previously described studies finding that fear of the overweight self was more strongly related to eating pathology than the pursuit of thinness (Dalley, 2016;Dalley & Buunk, 2009;Dalley et al, 2012;. Other studies, however, have found the opposite pattern of results, that indicators of approach motivation were more relevant to eating pathology than indicators of avoidance motivation (Clarke, Ramoz, Fladung, & Gorwood, 2016;Dondzilo et al, 2017;Rodgers, DuBois, Frumpkin, & Robinaugh, 2018). It should be noted that this research area is complicated by measurement issues.…”

Experimental manipulation of visual attention affects body size adaptation but not body dissatisfaction

“…Third, while body image distortion consists of both attitudinal (BD) and perceptual (BSSM) components, some early studies failed to find significant associations between the two (Thompson & Gardner, ), suggesting that changes in the perceptual component may not necessarily be accompanied by changes in the attitudinal component. More recently, it has been shown that increased rumination mediates the relationship between selective attention to thin bodies and BD (Dondzilo, Rieger, Palermo, Byrne, & Bell, ) and directing attention to thin idealised bodies does not increase rumination (Dondzilo et al, ). Fourth, the BD scale used in the current study did not specify the timescale to which participants should respond (Thompson, ).…”