Abstract: This research aims to prove that self-objectified female poor cognitive performance on high-level or challenging tasks is due to they distribute many of their cognitive resources to body-related information. Previous researchers found self-objectified female had poor performance on task and limited cognitive resources were available to other activities of self-objectified female, but few researchers manifested the cognitive resources were distributed to body-related information when a woman was being self-objectified. This research wants to find the intrinsic mechanism of self-objectified female poor task performance. The current study aims to manipulate female state self-objectification by two different finds of wearing situations, and then investigate the attention and recognition bias towards positive and negative body-related words among two groups female with different level of state self-objectification by dot probe paradigm and recognition paradigm. 60 female college students were divided into two groups randomly and each group consisting of 30 participants. One group tried on revealing tight-fitting clothing, as high state self-objectification (HSO) group; the other group tried on full loose clothing, as low state self-objectification (LSO) group. A modified visual dot probe paradigm was adopted to measure attention bias. We used 8 attractive body-related words, 8 unattractive body-related words and 32 neutral words as stimuli. There were totally three types of word pairing conditions: attractive-neutral words (A-N), unattractive-neutral words (U-N), and neutral-neutral words (N-N). A recognition paradigm was adopted to measure recognition bias. The word stimuli of recognition paradigm consisted of 32 old words that appeared in foregone dot probe paradigm and 32 new words. The 32words were made up of 8 attractive body-related words, 8 unattractive body-related words and 16 neutral words. At first, participants tried on a suit of clothing and completed Body Surveillance Subscale in a completely private dressing room. Next, participants completed attention task and then completed recognition task. HSO group had greater state self-objectification than LSO group (F (1，59)=18.88，p<0.001，η2P =0.28), showing we manipulated state self-objectification of participants successfully. We worked out the bias index (BI), orienting index (OI) and disengaging index (DI) of dot probe paradigm according to reaction time towards word stimuli. The DI towards attractive body-related words of participants with HSO significantly greater than zero (t (1, 58) = 3.10，p=0.004，d=0.80). This finding demonstrated that participants with HSO had difficulty in attention disengagement from attractive body-related words. And the results of recognition paradigm showed that there was an interaction of reaction time between state self-objectification and word type (F (2, 58) = 4.22，p=0.017，η2P=0.07). The participants with HSO were significantly faster than the participants with LSO when stimuli were attractive body-related words (F(1, 58) = 4.66，p=0.035，η2P=0.07). This finding showed that participants with HSO had stronger memory trace to attractive body-related words. In summary, participants with HSO had the attention and recognition bias towards body-related cues. In conclusion, our results demonstrated that cognitive resources were distributed to body-related information when a woman was being self-objectified. The finding explains what consume recognition resources of self-objectified women and why they have poor performance on high-level or challenging tasks.

Key words: self-objectification, attentional bias, memorial bias, dot probe paradigm.

摘要： 采用点探测任务和再认任务探讨高低自我客体化女性对积极身体词和消极身体词的注意和记忆偏向，探讨自我客体化女性的糟糕任务表现的内在机制。结果发现，高自我客体化女性对积极身体词存在注意脱离困难，对积极身体词的反应时显著快于低自我客体化女性。研究结果证实了自我客体化女性存在对身体线索的注意和记忆偏向，说明自我客体化使女性对身体相关信息分配了更多的认知资源，会妨碍任务表现。

关键词: 自我客体化, 注意偏向, 记忆偏向, 点探测范式