Attentional Bias To Body-related Information In Persons With Weight-related Negative Physical Self Schema: An ERP Study

For half a century, there have been fruitful findings in the area of body image in the western countries, most of which were on the risk factors for body image dissatisfaction and eating disorders. Meanwhile, a large number of researches on body image disorders and eating disorders have found that this group of people showed cognitive bias to body-related information. These studies have demonstrated the existence of negative physical self schema, but few researches have involved the brain and neural mechanism of the cognitive bias. From a social cognitive view and by event-related potential technique, this study was to explore the brain mechanism of attentional bias to body-related information in the people with weight-related negative physical self schema, which were important to the early diagnosis and prevention and intervention of eating disorders. The findings of this study may provide basis for therapy of eating disorders or body image disorders.Based on early findings, two ERP experiments were conducted to explore the brain mechanism of attentional bias to body-related information in female with weight-related negative physical self. In experiment one, emotional Stroop paradigm was used to explore the brain activities during cognitive processing to body-related words. In experiment two, attentional shifting task was utilized to investigate the brain activities during cognitive processing to body-related pictures.Some conclusions were drawn from the present research: ERP data showed a profound attentional bias to body-related information. This attentional bias occurred at both of the sensory stage and cognitive stage.