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Guardia (2012) - contemporary study AN - Ao1 - Coggle Diagram
Guardia (2012) - contemporary study AN - Ao1
AIM
The aim was 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.
Would people with AN be different from a control group in judging whether a gap was large enough for their body to pass through.
To continue previous research which showed that patients with AN misjudged their ability to fit through a door that was clearly too big for them, by also testing whether this problem extended to other individual – would they also misjudge the body size of other people.
SAMPLE
The study was approved by an independent ethics committee. Each participant was given an information sheet so that they could give informed consent. Parental consent was given for anyone under 18. 50 young female participants took part, 25 with AN from an eating disorder clinic and 25 healthy controls. They were all students from Lille, France and were matched for age and education. The mean age for the AN group was 23.84 and was 24.48 for the control group. They checked that there were no perceptual problems and that the AN patients fulfilled the DSM-IV-R criteria for diagnosis. A psychiatrist carried out an interview to check there were no co-morbidities. Controls had a BMI of between 18.5 and 25. In comparison the average BMI of the AN group was 15.645.
PROCEDURE
Assessments of height, shoulder width and weight were standardised. They measured changes over time in nutritional status by looking at weight before the disorder, six months before the study and at the time of the study. They gathered data about body dissatisfaction and concern about weight using questionnaires, including the Body Shape Questionnaire and the Eating Disorder Inventory-2. The BSQ consisted of 34 items and was a self report of questionnaire that assessed concerns of body shape in the last 4 weeks. The EDI-2 consisted of 11 scores measuring psychological features of AN.
51 different openings from 30cm – 80cm were projected onto a wall in random order. Each opening was presented 4 times. The opening reached the floor so that it looked like a door.
The first person perspective (1PP): Participants judged whether their own body would fit through the opening. They had to imagine themselves walking through and say whether they could walk through at normal speed without turning sideways.
The third person perspective (3PP): Participants had to imagine the experimenter going through the opening. They could move to get a better view of the experimenter and had to say whether the experimenter could walk through without turning.
An opening was classed as a perceived critical opening (a space that you could walk through) when it had 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. When the perceived critical opening was 1 it meant that it was equal to the shoulder width so no chance of passing through.
A ratio of higher than 1 meant there was a safety margin. Less than 1 meant that the body could not pass through.
The experimenter was 28 years old, 1.60m in height, weighed 52kg and her shoulder width was 38cm. She stood 5.9m from the wall projection.
RESULTS
The AN group showed significant overestimation of their own body size, judging that they would be unable to fit through an opening that was considerably bigger than their actual body size. In the 1PP condition the mean perceptual ratios were higher for the AN group than for the controls. The mean ratio for the AN group was 1.321 and for controls it was 1.106 (p=0.001).
They were much more accurate in predicting the body size of the experimenter. In the 3PP condition the mean perceptual ratios were the same. Although the average ratio for the AN group was higher (1.227) than for the controls (1.137) it was not a significant difference.
Patients have not adapted their internal body image to take into account their ‘new’ body size after developing the disorder. Their brains still perceive their bodies to be larger despite the visual information contradicting this.
CONCLUSION
Those with AN significantly overestimated their own ‘possibility’ in relation to the control group. The patients also said they felt larger than they were. Another important result was that, although those with AN made errors when judging their own passibility, they did not make such errors when judging the passability of the experimenter. The control group’s judgements were the same when judging their own or the experimenter passability.
Those with AN significantly overestimated their own ‘possibility’ in relation to the control group. The patients also said they felt larger than they were. Another important result was that, although those with AN made errors when judging their own passibility, they did not make such errors when judging the passability of the experimenter. The control group’s judgements were the same when judging their own or the experimenter passability.
Patients have not adapted their internal body image to take into account their ‘new’ body size after developing the disorder. Their brains still perceive their bodies to be larger despite the visual information contradicting this.