Considering the prevalence and serious consequences of weight dissatisfaction, investigation of the cognitive and neural mechanisms of weight dissatisfaction seems to have important social implications. According to Vitousek and Hollon's (1990) cognitive theory of eating disorders, stereotyped, emotional, and exaggerated evaluations of weight-related information lead to maladaptive schemas related to body shape, weight, and the self. People with maladaptive schemas show an enhancement in attention and memory for schema-consistent information (e.g., fat stimuli) and selectively resist schema-inconsistent information (e.g., thin stimuli). At present, although previous studies have confirmed that people with fat negative body self show cognitive bias toward body-related information, there is still a lack of empirical research on the processing characteristics and neural mechanism toward body-related information of different emotional valence.
In this experiment, participants were assigned to an experimental group with high weight dissatisfaction (HWD) and a control group with low weight dissatisfaction (LWD) according to the scores on the Negative Physical Self Scale-Fatness. The final sample included 40 female college students. We employed a modified 1-back task and recorded ERPs time-locked to visually present body-related words, including negative fat words, positive fat words, negative thin words, and positive thin words. The participants were requested to judge whether the current word was the same as the last one. Compared with the passive viewing and dot-probe paradigm, the 1-back task required participants to pay attention to each word, and after reducing the continuous repetition probability of the word, more analyzable trials could be reserved, and the fatigue effect of the participants could be alleviated to some extent.
The behavioral results showed that the average accuracy for each group in the current study was over 95%, indicating that participants could complete the task efficiently. There was no significant difference in response time between the HWD and LWD groups. The ERP results showed that body-related words did not elicit larger anterior N1 and N170 amplitudes in the HWD group than in the LWD group, showing that there was no negative cognitive bias toward fatness-related information in the early ERP components related to attentional processing and cognitive resource investment among females with HWD. Besides, in both the HWD group and LWD group, body-related words induced larger P2 and LPP amplitudes and smaller N300 amplitudes than did non-body-related neutral words, additionally, positive thin words and negative thin words induced larger LPP amplitudes than did positive fat words and negative fat words. Since there were significant differences in LPP amplitude induced by different body-related words, the average LPP amplitudes were analyzed by four-factor ANOVA to further distinguish the processing differences between body shape dimensions (fat and thin) and emotional valence (positive and negative). The results showed that cognitive bias toward body-related words was dominated by body dimensions rather than emotional valence in the late processing stage, and the LPP amplitude induced by thinness-related words was significantly higher than that induced by fatness-related words.
In conclusion, the present study partially validates the cognitive-behavioral theory. Specifically, in the early processing stage, females could distinguish between body-related and non-body-related information, both fatness-related and thinness-related information were emotionally salient, and under the influence of task demand, the processing of body-related information was suppressed subsequently. In the late processing stage, females invested more cognitive resources toward thinness-related information and maintained more attention to thinness-related information. And the most important finding was that the females' cognitive bias toward body-related information in late processing was dominated by body shape rather than emotional valence. These findings reveal the mechanism of cognitive bias toward body-related information among females with fat negative body self and contribute to the model of the cognitive-behavioral theory of body image disturbance, which may help enhance prevention and interventions for reducing weight dissatisfaction.
Key words
fat negative physical self /
body-related information /
emotional valence /
cognitive bias /
ERP
{{custom_sec.title}}
{{custom_sec.title}}
{{custom_sec.content}}
References
[1] 陈红, 冯文峰, 黄希庭. (2008). 大学生负面身体自我认知加工偏好. 心理学报, 40(7), 809-818.
[2] 陈红, Jackson, T., 高笑. (2015). 中国人身体自我及饮食行为研究: 十年回顾. 心理与行为研究, 13(5), 706-712.
[3] 冯文锋, 罗文波, 廖渝, 陈红, 罗跃嘉. (2010). 胖负面身体自我女大学生对胖信息的注意偏好: 注意警觉还是注意维持. 心理学报, 42(7), 779-790.
[4] 高笑, 王泉川, 陈红, 王宝英, 赵光. (2012). 胖负面身体自我女性对身体信息注意偏向成分的时间进程: 一项眼动追踪研究. 心理学报, 44(4), 498-510.
[5] 史攀. (2020). 相貌整容者对面孔信息加工的认知偏向 (硕士学位论文). 西南大学, 重庆.
[6] Andrzejewski, J. A., & Carlson, J. M. (2020). Electrocortical responses associated with attention bias to fearful facial expressions and auditory distress signals. International Journal of Psychophysiology, 151, 94-102.
[7] Carlson, J. M. (2021). A systematic review of event-related potentials as outcome measures of attention bias modification. Psychophysiology, 58(6), Article e13801.
[8] Chen, H., & Jackson, T. (2005). Are cognitive biases associated with body image concerns similar between cultures? Body Image, 2(2), 177-186.
[9] Chen H., Jackson T., & Huang X. T. (2006). The negative physical self scale: Initial development and validation in samples of Chinese adolescents and young adults. Body Image, 3(4), 401-412.
[10] Dickey L., Pegg S., & Kujawa A. (2021). Neurophysiological responses to interpersonal emotional images: Associations with symptoms of depression and social anxiety. Cognitive, Affective, and Behavioral Neuroscience, 21(6), 1306-1318.
[11] Dou H. R., Liang L. M., Ma J., Lu J. C., Zhang W. H., & Li Y. (2021). Irrelevant task suppresses the N170 of automatic attention allocation to fearful faces. Scientific Reports, 11(1), Article 11754.
[12] Eik-Nes T., Romild U., Guzey I., Holmen T., Micali N., & Bjørnelv S. (2015). Women's weight and disordered eating in a large Norwegian community sample: The Nord-Trøndelag Health Study (HUNT). BMJ Open, 5(10), Article e008125.
[13] Faul F., Erdfelder E., Lang A.-G., & Buchner A. (2007). G*Power 3: A flexible statistical power analysis program for the social, behavioral, and biomedical sciences. Behavior Research Methods, 39(2), 175-191.
[14] Gao X., Deng X., Chen N. J., Luo W. B., Hu L., Jackson T., & Chen H. (2011). Attentional biases among body-dissatisfied young women: An ERP study with rapid serial visual presentation. International Journal of Psychophysiology, 82(2), 133-142.
[15] Gao X., Li X. J., Yang X. Y., Wang Y., Jackson T., & Chen H. (2013). I can’t stop looking at them: Interactive effects of body mass index and weight dissatisfaction on attention towards body shape photographs. Body Image, 10(2), 191-199.
[16] Grogan, C. (2016). Body Image: Understanding body dissatisfaction in men, women and children. Taylor & Francis.
[17] Hajcak, G., & Foti, D. (2020). Significance? Significance! Empirical, methodological, and theoretical connections between the late positive potential and P300 as neural responses to stimulus significance: An integrative review. Psychophysiology, 57(7), Article e13570.
[18] Loijen A., Vrijsen J. N., Egger J. I. M., Becker E. S., & Rinck M. (2020). Biased approach-avoidance tendencies in psychopathology: A systematic review of their assessment and modification. Clinical Psychology Review, 77, Article 101825.
[19] Meneguzzo P., Collantoni E., Bonello E., Vergine M., Behrens S. C., Tenconi E., & Favaro A. (2021). The role of sexual orientation in the relationships between body perception, body weight dissatisfaction, physical comparison, and eating psychopathology in the cisgender population. Eating and Weight Disorders-Studies on Anorexia, Bulimia and Obesity, 26(6), 1985-2000.
[20] Mortazavi M., Aigner K. M., Antono J. E., Gambacorta C., Nahum M., Levi D. M., & Föcker J. (2021). Neural correlates of visual spatial selective attention are altered at early and late processing stages in human amblyopia. European Journal of Neuroscience, 53(4), 1086-1106.
[21] Moussally J. M., Brosch T., & van der Linden, M. (2016). Time course of attentional biases toward body shapes: The impact of body dissatisfaction. Body Image, 19, 159-168.
[22] Rossignol M., Philippot P., Douilliez C., Crommelinck M., & Campanella S. (2005). The perception of fearful and happy facial expression is modulated by anxiety: An event-related potential study. Neuroscience Letters, 377(2), 115-120.
[23] Sander D., Grandjean D., & Scherer K. R. (2005). A systems approach to appraisal mechanisms in emotion. Neural Networks, 18(4), 317-352.
[24] Schupp, H. T., & Renner, B. (2011). The implicit nature of the anti-fat bias. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 5, Article 23.
[25] Sharpe H., Griffiths S., Choo T. H., Eisenberg M. E., Mitchison D., Wall M., & Neumark‐Sztainer D. (2018). The relative importance of dissatisfaction, overvaluation and preoccupation with weight and shape for predicting onset of disordered eating behaviors and depressive symptoms over 15 years. International Journal of Eating Disorders, 51(10), 1168-1175.
[26] Störmer V. S., McDonald J. J., & Hillyard S. A. (2019). Involuntary orienting of attention to sight or sound relies on similar neural biasing mechanisms in early visual processing. Neuropsychologia, 132, Article 107122.
[27] Vitousek, K. B., & Hollon, S. D. (1990). The investigation of schematic content and processing in eating disorders. Cognitive Therapy and Research, 14(2), 191-214.
[28] Wang K., Liang R., Yu X. Y., Shum D. H. K., Roalf D., & Chan, R. C. K. (2020). The thinner the better: Evidence on the internalization of the slimness ideal in Chinese college students. PsyCh Journal, 9(4), 544-552.
[29] Wang X., Shangguan C. Y., & Lu J. M. (2019). Time course of emotion effects during emotion-label and emotion-laden word processing. Neuroscience Letters, 699, 1-7.
[30] Wang X. Y., Liu Y., She Y., & Gao X. (2019). Neural correlates of appearance-based social comparison: The modulating effects of body dissatisfaction and person perspective. Biological Psychology, 144, 74-84.
[31] Zimmer U., Rosenzopf H., Poglitsch C., & Ischebeck A. (2019). ERP-study on the time course of disgust-motivated spatial avoidance. Biological Psychology, 144, 20-27.
PDF(1402 KB)
