Resumen de Attention to female body shapes
Introduction: Body dissatisfaction is an important factor in the development and maintenance ofeating disorders. In part, this may be due to the comparison with the predominant thin ideal in massmedia, which can lead to an increased body dissatisfaction. Furthermore, also many people who donot meet the diagnostic criteria for eating disorders show a very problematic way to cope with theirfood intake. The present study aimed to investigate the attentional pattern evoked when young womenwere exposed to pictures of female bodies with different shapes.Methods: Fifty-five women, aged 18 to 30 years, viewed a series of pictures, each one containing fourphotos of women, ranging from a slim to a heavy body shape. The photos were exposed in a 2x2array during 3 seconds. Body Shape Questionnaire was used to divide participants into two groups;high and low body dissatisfaction. The direction of the gaze was recorded continuously by means ofan eye-tracker.Results: In general, an attentional bias in the body dissatisfaction group was observed, i.e., womenlooked longer to the slimmest picture in the array and less time to the heaviest one. Women in theother group (low body dissatisfaction) showed more distributed attention to the four body shapes.Conclusions: In general, these results suggest interesting possibilities of using easy ocular trackingtests in the early detection of eating disorders, and perhaps possibilities of improving clinical andpreventive interventions.
