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Evidence for a perceptual mechanism relating body size misperception and eating disorder symptoms

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Eating and Weight Disorders - Studies on Anorexia, Bulimia and Obesity Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

Purpose

There are known and serious health risks associated with extreme body weights, including the development of eating disorders. Body size misperceptions are particularly evident in individuals with eating disorders, compared to healthy controls. The present research investigated whether serial dependence, a recently discovered bias in body size judgement, is associated with eating disorder symptomatology. We additionally examined whether this bias operates on holistic body representations or whether it works by distorting specific visual features.

Methods

A correlational analysis was used to examine the association between serial dependence and eating disorder symptomatology. We used a within-subjects experimental design to investigate the holistic nature of this misperception. Participants were 63 young women, who judged the size of upright and inverted female body images using a visual analogue scale and then completed the Eating Disorder Examination-Questionnaire (EDE-Q) to assess eating disorder symptoms.

Results

Our findings provide the first evidence of an association between serial dependence and eating disorder symptoms, with significant and positive correlations between body size misperception owing to serial dependence and EDE-Q scores, when controlling for Body Mass Index. Furthermore, we reveal that serial dependence is consistent with distortion of local visual features.

Conclusions

Findings are discussed in relation to the broader theories of central coherence, cognitive inflexibility, and multisensory integration difficulties, and as providing a candidate mechanism for body size misperception in an eating disorder population.

Level of evidence

Level 1, experimental study.

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Acknowledgements

JA and JB designed the study. Testing and data collection were performed by JA. JA and JB analysed the data and drafted the manuscript. JA, JB, RP, and ER provided critical revisions and approved the final manuscript for submission.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Psychological Science, University of Western Australia, Crawley, WA, 6009, Australia

    Joanna Alexi, Romina Palermo & Jason Bell

  2. Australian Research Council, Centre of Excellence in Cognition and its Disorders, University of Western Australia, Crawley, WA, 6009, Australia

    Joanna Alexi, Romina Palermo & Jason Bell

  3. Research School of Psychology, Australian National University, Canberra, ACT, 0200, Australia

    Elizabeth Rieger

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  1. Joanna Alexi
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Correspondence to Joanna Alexi.

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The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest. Furthermore, there are no competing financial interests.

Ethical approval

This research was approved by the University of Western Australia’s Human Research Ethics Committee and performed in accordance with their guidelines, rules, and regulations.

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Informed written consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study.

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The datasets created and analysed during the current research are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

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Alexi, J., Palermo, R., Rieger, E. et al. Evidence for a perceptual mechanism relating body size misperception and eating disorder symptoms. Eat Weight Disord 24, 615–621 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40519-019-00653-4

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s40519-019-00653-4

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