Eye-movement Studies About Attention Bias Towards Face-related Information Among Females With Face-related Negative Physical Self

Negative physical self, known as body image disorder, refers to negative cognition, negative emotion and behavior regulation for body, including multiple dimensions such as face, height and weight. Previous researches for negative physical self focused mostly on weight dimension, while researches for physical self in Chinese were revealed that people showed more dissatisfaction for face than weight(Chen,2006) and facial dissatisfaction, indeed, were predictive factor for eating disorder(Chen&Jackson,2008)。Face-related negative physical self, as a subcomponent of negative physical self, mainly refers to negative cognition, the experience of negative emotion and corresponding behavior regulation among individuals who hold that their faces are unattractive. Face plays an important role in communication, interaction and social life of human. There were a lot of researches revealing that attractive faces have very strong advantages in hunting job, choosing mate, and interpersonal relationship. Recently, researchers in our country paid close attention to the cognitive processing of individuals with negative physical self. A lot of researches were found that individuals with negative physical self exhibited interpretation bias, cognitive bias, attentional bias and memory bias towards body-related information, in which of them fatness-related negative physical self got more attention. Researchers used different paradigms (such as dot probe paradigm, spatial cueing paradigm, lexical decision paradigm and dichotic listening paradigm), different channels for stimulus presentation (such as visual and auditory channel), and different types of stimuli (such as pictures and words) to explore their attentional bias. Although there were several researches about cognitive bias towards body-related information among individuals with fatness-related negative physical self, it was still little known that whether individuals, with face-related negative physical self, showed cognitive bias towards face-related information among.In this paper, two experiments, based on eye-movement technique, aimed at exploring the course of attentional bias towards face-related words and faces with different levels of attractiveness among females who had face-related negative physical self. This study helped to reveal the characteristics and rules of cognitive processing of face-related information among females with face-related negative physical self. It also provided theoretical and experimental basis for identifying, preventing and correcting face-related behavioral problems, and contributed to self-development, personality improvement and psychological harmony among adolescences.In experiment1, we used modified dot probe paradigm, with positive and negative face-related words as stimuli, to investigate the time course of attentional bias towards face-related information in the form of words among females with face-related negative physical self. In positive face-related words-neutral words pairing condition, it was found that females, who have face-related negative physical self, were more likely to direct their initial gaze to negative face-related words, had a shorter mean latency of first fixation on negative face-related words, had longer first fixation on negative face-related relative control group and positive face-related words, but didn’t exhibit any total gaze duration bias, which implied attention vigilance-maintenance model. Reaction time data also showed the difficulty in attention disengagement from negative face-related words among females with face-related negative physical self. In positive-negative face-related words pairing condition, attentional bias towards negative words among females with face-related negative physical self showed a similar trend.In experiment2, we used the same paradigm, with high and low attractive faces as stimuli, to explore the time course of attentional bias towards face-related information in the form of pictures among females with face-related negative physical self. In highly attractive faces-lowly attractive faces, results showed that, compared to highly attractive faces and control group, female possessing face-related negative physical self directed their first fixation more frequently to highly and lowly attractive faces, while they fixated their initial gaze more frequently on lowly attractive faces than highly attractive ones. They detected lowly attractive faces more quickly and had longer initial gaze on them relative to highly attractive faces and control group. The model of attention among females with face-related negative physical self was vigilance-disengagement difficulty. Behavioral data was revealed that females with face-related negative physical self showed difficulty in attention disengagement from lowly attractive faces but without such effect in highly attractive faces. In highly and lowly attractive faces pairing condition, both groups showed total fixation duration bias towards highly attractive faces, consistent with behavioral results. Based on the above experimental results, we could safely draw the following conclusions:two experiments got similar results, in which females with face-related negative physical self showed attentional bias towards negative face-related information in the form of words and pictures, and such bias, mainly occurring in the early stage of attention processing, included initial direction, speeded detection and initial attention maintenance on the negative face-related information.This study was innovative in the following aspects:theoretically, researches about face-related negative physical self were the extending of studies about body image focusing on overweight in western, possessed more Chinese cultural specificity and enriched theories of body image; Moreover, only one study explored memory bias towards negative face-related information among females with face-related negative physical self of appearance information negative memory bias, but no research was involved in attentional bias. Methodologically, eye-movement technology wasn’t used in previous researches about cognitive bias towards face-related information. Practically, to explore the cognitive processing characteristics and laws of face-related information among females with face-related negative physical self contributed to behavior identification of face-related problems of adolescents, provided theoretical and experimental foundation for the prevention and correction of face-related negative physical self, helped self development of adolescents, personality improvement and psychological harmony.