Attentional Bias Toward Body Words And Modification In Body-dissatisfied Students In Junior High School

Body dissatisfaction has become a phenomenon that can not be ignored.In the process of cognition,body-dissatisfied students tend to pay attention to body related information such as body pictures and body words.Junior high school students are in the period of paying attention to their body image.Therefore,this attentional bias will not only increase their degree of body dissatisfaction,but also lead to serious consequences such as eating disorders.Scholars have proposed many interventions,such as cognitive behavioral therapy(CBT),group counseling,and attentional bias modification(ABM).Previous studies on attentional bias modification mainly focused on adult participants,and it is still unclear whether attentional bias modification is effective in body-dissatisfied adolescents.In view of the above problems,two experiments were put forward to explore the attentional bias of body words and the effect of attentional bias modification.In Experiment 1,the classical dot probe task was adopted to explore the attentional bias toward body words in body-dissatisfied students in junior high school.The body-dissatisfied group with high and low scores(31 participants of each group)was screened out by the middle school student body dissatisfaction questionnaire.The results show that: in the condition that the detection point position was consistent with the negative body words,the reaction time of the participants in the high body-dissatisfied group was significantly faster than that of the participants in the low body-dissatisfied group.This result indicate that compared to the students with low body dissatisfaction,attentional bias might be more intensive toward negative body words for the students with high body dissatisfaction.In addition,for the students with high body dissatisfaction,attentional bias might be more intensive toward negative relative to positive body words.In Experiment 2,the effect of attentional bias modification on attentional bias was explored by modified dot probe task,and 22 junior high school students were selected as high body-dissatisfied group by using the middle school student body dissatisfaction questionnaire.The modified dot probe task consists of three parts: pre-test stage,training stage and post-test stage.The change of attentional bias score in pre-test stage and post-test stage was analyzed.The result of experiment 2 shows that the attentional bias scores of negative body words decreased significantly after receiving attentional bias modification.This result indicates that the method of avoiding negative body stimulation can effectively modify the attentional bias of high body-dissatisfied junior high school students.In sum,the results of two experiments demonstrate that the junior high school students with high body dissatisfaction will pay more attention to the negative body words,but this tendency can be effectively intervened by single-session attentional bias modification.After understanding the present situation of junior high school students' body-dissatisfied and explore the effectiveness of the short-term modification method,we can carry out mental health education more pertinently,reduce the influence of attentional bias on junior high school students,and guide them to form a positive body image concept.