guardia et al Flashcards
what was the aim?
- 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 whether it was an overall judgement problem
summarise the procedure used
- study approved by an independent ethics committee, information sheet for informed consent
- 51 different openings 30-80 cm wide projected onto a wall in a random order, each 4 times
- condition 1 = 1PP where they judged their own body
- condition 2 = 3PP where they imagined the experimenter going throgh the opening
describe the characteristics of the experimenter
- 28 years old
- 1.6 m
- weighed 52 kg
when was an opening considered a perceived critical opening?
- when it had a yes response 50% of the time
- ratio obtained by dividing the perceived critical opening size by shoulder width of the participant
- when perceived critical opening had a value of 1 it meant it was the same size as shoulder width so they couldn’t fit
what was the sample used?
- 50 young female participants
- 25 with AN from an eating disorder clinic and 25 healthy controls
- all students from Lille and matched on age and education
- interview to check for no comorbidity
what were the statistics of BMI for the AN group compared to the controls?
- AN group = 15.6
- CONTROL group = 22.1
what assessments were done beforehand?
- height, shoulder width and weight were standardised
- changes over time in nutritional status (6 months before study and at the time)
- data about body dissatisfaction using questionnaires e.g. body shape questionnaire
what were the results from the study?
- AN group had significantly higher score on the body shape questionnaire
- AN group showed a significant overestimation of their own body size which meant perceptual ratios in the 1PP condition were significantly higher than for controls
what was the differences in ratios for the AN group for 1PP and 3PP?
- 1PP = 1.321
- 3PP = 1.227
- control group showed no significant difference
what conclusions can be made?
- those with AN significantly overestimated their own possibility in relation to the control group
- AN patients said that they felt larger than they were
- didn’t make errors when judging the experimenter just themselves
- thought to be due to body schema issues
what can be said about generalisability?
- all female sample mean age 23.84 so doesn’t represent AN in males
- ethnocentric sample, all from Lille so not representative of AN in other cultures which may have different beauty standards
what can be said about reliability?
- standardised procedures used e.g. 50 openings 30-80 cm wide
- can look for consistency of anorexic perceptions width
what is an application of the study?
- perception is a huge application in AN
- informs treatments of CBT to change the faulty thinking patterns and re-establish positive thinking patterns
what is a point about controlling ppt variables for validity?
- e.g. perceptual issues and comorbid factors such as depression
- create a clear cause and effect relationship between perception and body width
what point can be made about triangulation?
- quantitative data = from BMI
- qualitative data from BSQ
- more accurate understanding of cognitive distortions of AN individuals
what is an issue with demand characteristics/social desirability?
- all the AN patients were from a clinic so may lie on the self report data as they would want to leave the clinic
what can be said as a strength of task validity?
- fitting through a doorway is an everyday task so it holds mundane realism
what is an issue with ecological validity?
- lab setting e.g. projections on a wall and so not representative of how we judge sizes in everyday life
what makes ethics high in the study?
- given an information sheet and got informed consent, if younger than 18 parental consent was gained
what decreases the ethics of the study?
- distress caused e.g. 1PP could be damaging to judge own body size
