Anorexia Contemporary (Guardia Et Al 2012)

Question 1

What are the aims?

Answer 1

• To investigate whether problems in judging body actions, such as deciding whether a body fits through a space, occurred only when judging one’s own body or being an overall judgement problem.
• would people with anorexia be deferent from a control group in judging whether a gap was large enough for them to pass through.
• continue previous research which showed that patients with anorexia misjudged their ability to pass through a door clearly big enough, while also testing if this problem extended to other individuals - would they also misjudge the body size of other people?

Question 2

What’s the sample?

Answer 2

• 50 young female participants, 25 with anorexia from an eating disorder clinic and 25 healthy controls.
  -All students from France and matched for age and education.
• checked there were no perceptual problems and that the anorexia patients fulfilled the DSM-IV-R criteria for diagnosis.
• psychiatrist carried out an interview to check there were no co-morbidities.

Question 3

What’s the method/procedure?

Answer 3

• assessments of height, shoulder width and weight were standardised. They measured changes over time in nutritional status by looking at weight before the disorder, 6 months before the study and during the time of the study.
• they gathered data about body dissatisfaction and concern about weight using questionnaires which included the body shape questionnaire.

Experimental procedure: 51 different openings from 30 -80cm were projected onto a wall in random order
Two conditions:
- the first person perspective: participants judged whether their own body would fit through the opening. Say whether they could walk through, without turning sideways, at normal speed.
- the third person perspective: participants had to imagine the experimenter going through the opening. Say whether the experimenter could walk through, without turning sideways, at normal speed. The experimenter stood 5.9 m from the wall protection.

• an opening was classed as a perceived critical opening when given a ‘yes’ response 50% of the time.
• a ratio was obtained by dividing the perceived critical opening size by the shoulder width of the participant.

Question 4

What are the findings?

Answer 4

Comparing the experimental and control groups:
-the two groups were similar in many ways ( education level, age and height). The control groups BMI was higher by 6.415kb/cm2 and shoulder width was smaller for the anorexia group at 37.66 cm.
- the body shape questionnaire scores were significantly deferent as expected. Higher for anorexia group at 123.96.

-The anorexia group showed a significant overestimation, judging they would be unable to fit through an opening considerably larger.in the 1PP the mean perceptual ratios where higher at 1.321 for the anorexia group than controls at 1.106.

• they were much more accurate at predicting the body size of the experimenter.
• ratios were the same for the 3PP condition the mean perceptual ratios were the same. Although the average ratio for the anorexia group was higher (1.227) than for the controls (1.137) it was not a significant difference.
• there was a significant deference between the mean ratios for those with anorexia in the 1PP and the 3PP condition. When anorexia patients judged their own body the mean ratio was 1.321 and then those with anorexia who judged the experimenter’s body going through the openingthe mean ratio was 1.227. The controls showed no significant difference between 1PP and 3PP.
• anorexia patients rated their own body differently to the experimenter’s and how the controls rated their own body
  -they also found a correlation between the judgements made by the anorexia group and their pre-illness bodyweight / size. those who’d lost body weight 6 months before study showed greater deference in their own and the experimenter’s perceptions.

Question 5

What were the conclusions?

Answer 5

• Those with anorexia significantly overestimated their own possibility in relation to the control group. Also said they felt larger than they were.
  -although those with anorexia made nervous when budging their own possibility, they did not make such errors when judging the experimenter.
  -The control group’s judgements were the same when judging their own and the experimenter.

-The overestimation is thought to be because of their own body schema issues. Anorexia group better at judging the experimenter, therefore not a perceptual issue.
-patents have not adapted their internal body image to take into account their ‘new’ body size after developing the disorder. Brans still perceive their bodies to be larger.